XXXI. THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS…

XXXI. THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS

But that only the more roused the devil in the man; that, and the knowledge that he had his own headstrong act to thank for the position. He looked on the panic-stricken people who, scared by the turmoil without, had come together in the courtyard, wringing their hands and chattering; and his face was so dark and forbidding that fear of him took the place of all other fear, and the nearest shrank from contact with him. On any other entering as he had entered, they would have hailed questions; they would have asked what was amiss and if the city were rising, and where were Bigot and his men. But Count Hannibal's eye struck curiosity dumb. When he cried from his saddle, "Bring me the landlord!" the trembling man was found, and brought, and thrust forward almost without a word.

"You have a back gate?" Tavannes said, while the crowd leaned forward to catch his words.

"Yes, my lord," the man faltered.

"Into the street which leads to the ramparts?"

"Ye--yes, my lord."

"Then"--to Badelon--"saddle! You have five minutes. Saddle as you never saddled before," he continued in a low tone, "or----" His tongue did not finish the threat, but his hand waved the man away. "For you," he held Tignonville an instant with his lowering eye, "and the preaching fool with you, get arms and mount! You have never played aught but the woman yet; but play me false now, or look aside but a foot from the path I bid you take, and you thwart me no more, monsieur! And you, madame," he continued, turning to the Countess, who stood bewildered at one of the doors, the Provost's daughter clinging and weeping about her, "you have three minutes to get your women to horse! See you, if you please, that they take no longer!"

She found her voice with difficulty. "And this child?" she said. "She is in my care."

"Bring her," he muttered with a scowl of impatience. And then, raising his voice as he turned on the terrified gang of hostlers and inn servants who stood gaping round him, "Go help!" he thundered. "Go help! And quickly!" he added, his face growing a shade darker as a second bell began to toll from a neighbouring tower, and the confused babel in the Place Ste.-Croix settled into a dull roar of "Sacrilege! sacrilege!"--"Hasten!"

Fortunately it had been his first intention to go to the Council attended by the whole of his troop; and eight horses stood saddled in the stalls. Others were hastily pulled out and bridled, and the women were mounted. La Tribe, at a look from Tavannes, took behind him the Provost's daughter, who was helpless with terror. Between the suddenness of the alarm, the uproar without, and the panic within, none but a man whose people served him at a nod and dreaded his very gesture could have got his party mounted in time. Javette would fain have swooned, but she dared not. Tignonville would fain have questioned, but he shrank from the venture. The Countess would fain have said something, but she forced herself to obey and no more. Even so the confusion in the courtyard, the mingling of horses and men and trappings and saddle-bags, would have made another despair; but wherever Count Hannibal, seated in his saddle in the middle, turned his face, chaos settled into a kind of order, servants, ceasing to listen to the yells and cries outside, ran to fetch, women dropped cloaks from the gallery, and men loaded muskets and strapped on bandoliers.

Until at last--but none knew what those minutes of suspense cost him--he saw all mounted, and, pistol in hand, shepherded them to the back gates. As he did so he stooped for a few scowling words with Badelon, whom he sent to the van of the party: then he gave the word to open. It was done; and even as Montsoreau's horsemen, borne on the bosom of a second and more formidable throng, swept raging into the already crowded square, and the cry went up for "a ram! a ram!" to batter in the gates, Tavannes, hurling his little party before him, dashed out at the back, and putting to flight a handful of rascals who had wandered to that side, cantered unmolested down the lane to the ramparts. Turning eastward at the foot of the frowning Castle, he followed the inner side of the wall in the direction of the gate by which he had entered the preceding evening.

To gain this his party had to pass the end of the Rue Toussaint, which issues from the Place Ste.-Croix and runs so straight that the mob seething in front of the inn had only to turn their heads to see them. The danger incurred at this point was great; for a party as small as Tavannes' and encumbered with women would have had no chance if attacked within the walls.

Count Hannibal knew it. But he knew also that the act which he had committed rendered the north bank of the Loire impossible for him. Neither King nor Marshal, neither Charles of Valois nor Gaspard of Tavannes, would dare to shield him from an infuriated Church, a Church too wise to forgive certain offences. His one chance lay in reaching the southern bank of the Loire--roughly speaking, the Huguenot bank--and taking refuge in some town, Rochelle or St. Jean d'Angely, where the Huguenots were strong, and whence he might take steps to set himself right with his own side.

But to cross the great river which divides France into two lands widely differing he must leave the city by the east gate; for the only bridge over the Loire within forty miles of Angers lay eastward from the town, at Ponts de Ce, four miles away. To this gate, therefore, past the Rue Toussaint, he whirled his party daringly; and though the women grew pale as the sounds of riot broke louder on the ear, and they discovered that they were approaching instead of leaving the danger--and though Tignonville for an instant thought him mad, and snatched at the Countess's rein--his men-at-arms, who knew him, galloped stolidly on, passed like clockwork the end of the street, and, reckless of the stream of persons hurrying in the direction of the alarm, heedless of the fright and anger their passage excited, pressed steadily on. A moment and the gate through which they had entered the previous evening appeared before them. And--a sight welcome to one of them--it was open.

They were fortunate indeed, for a few seconds later they had been too late. The alarm had preceded them; as they dashed up, a man ran to the chains of the portcullis and tried to lower it. He failed to do so at the first touch, and quailing, fled from Badelon's levelled pistol. A watchman on one of the bastions of the wall shouted to them to halt or he would fire: but the riders yelled in derision, and thundering through the echoing archway, emerged into the open, and saw, extended before them, in place of the gloomy vistas of the Black Town, the glory of the open country and the vine-clad hills, and the fields about the Loire yellow with late harvest.

The women gasped their relief, and one or two who were most out of breath would have pulled up their horses and let them trot, thinking the danger at an end. But a curt savage word from the rear set them flying again, and down and up and on again they galloped, driven forward by the iron hand which never relaxed its grip of them. Silent and pitiless he whirled them before him until they were within a mile of the long Ponts de Ce--a series of bridges rather than one bridge--and the broad shallow Loire lay plain before them, its sandbanks grilling in the sun, and grey lines of willows marking its eyots. By this time some of the women, white with fatigue, could only cling to their saddles with their hands; while others were red-hot, their hair unrolled, and the perspiration mingled with the dust on their faces. But he who drove them had no pity for weakness in an emergency. He looked back and saw, a half-mile behind them, the glitter of steel following hard on their heels: and "Faster! faster!" he cried, regardless of their prayers: and he beat the rearmost of the horses with his scabbard. A waiting-woman shrieked that she should fall, but he answered ruthlessly, "Fall then, fool!" and the instinct of self-preservation coming to her aid, she clung and bumped and toiled on with the rest until they reached the first houses of the town about the bridges, and Badelon raised his hand as a signal that they might slacken speed.

The bewilderment of the start had been so great that it was then only, when they found their feet on the first link of the bridge, that two of the party, the Countess and Tignonville, awoke to the fact that their faces were set southwards. To cross the Loire in those days meant much to all: to a Huguenot very much. It chanced that these two rode on to the bridge side by side, and the memory of their last crossing--the remembrance that, on their journey north a month before, they had crossed it hand-in-hand with the prospect of passing their lives together, and with no faintest thought of the events which were to ensue, flashed into the mind of each of them. It deepened the flush which exertion had brought to the woman's cheek, then left it paler than before. A minute earlier she had been wroth with her old lover; she had held him accountable for the outbreak in the town and this hasty retreat; now her anger died as she looked and she remembered. In the man, shallower of feeling and more alive to present contingencies, the uppermost emotion as he trod the bridge was one of surprise and congratulation.

He could not at first believe in their good fortune. "Mon Dieu!" he cried, "we are crossing!" And then again in a lower tone, "We are crossing! We are crossing!" And he looked at her.

It was impossible that she should not look back; that she who had ceased to be angry should not feel and remember; impossible that her answering glance should not speak to his heart. Below them, as on that day a month earlier, when they had crossed the bridges going northward, the broad shallow river ran its course in the sunshine, its turbid currents gleaming and flashing about the sandbanks and osier-beds. To the eye, the landscape, save that the vintage was farther advanced and the harvest in part gathered in, was the same. But how changed were their relations, their prospects, their hopes, who had then crossed the river hand-in-hand, planning a life to be passed together.

The young man's rage boiled up at the thought. Too vividly, too sharply it showed him the wrongs which he had suffered at the hands of the man who rode behind him, the man who even now drove him on and ordered him and insulted him. He forgot that he might have perished in the general massacre if Count Hannibal had not intervened. He forgot that Count Hannibal had spared him once and twice. He laid on his enemy's shoulders the guilt of all, the blood of all: and as, quick on the thought of his wrongs and his fellows' wrongs followed the reflection that with every league they rode southwards the chance of requital grew, he cried again, and this time joyously, "We are crossing! A little, and we shall be in our own land!"

The tears filled the Countess's eyes as she looked westwards and southwards. "Vrillac is there!" she cried; and she pointed. "I smell the sea!"

"Ay!" he answered, almost under his breath. "It lies there! And no more than thirty leagues from us! With fresh horses we might see it in two days!"

Badelon's voice broke in on them. "Forward!" he cried as they reached the southern bank. "En avant!" And, obedient to the word, the little party, refreshed by the short respite, took the road out of Ponts de Ce at a steady trot. Nor was the Countess the only one whose face glowed, being set southwards, or whose heart pulsed to the rhythm of the horses' hoofs that beat out "Home!" Carlat's and Madame Carlat's also. Javette even, hearing from her neighbour that they were over the Loire, plucked up courage; while La Tribe, gazing before him with moistened eyes, cried "Comfort" to the scared and weeping girl who clung to his belt. It was singular to see how all sniffed the air as if already it smacked of the sea and of the south; and how they of Poitou sat their horses as if they asked nothing better than to ride on and on and on until the scenes of home arose about them. For them the sky had already a deeper blue, the air a softer fragrance, the sunshine a purity long unknown!

Was it wonderful, when they had suffered so much on that northern bank? When their experience during the month had been comparable only with the direst nightmare? Yet one among them, after the first impulse of relief and satisfaction, felt differently. Tignonville's gorge rose against the sense of compulsion, of inferiority. To be driven forward after this fashion, whether he would or no, to be placed at the beck of every base-born man-at-arms, to have no clearer knowledge of what had happened or of what was passing, or of the peril from which they fled, than the women among whom he rode--these things kindled anew the sullen fire of hate. North of the Loire there had been some excuse for his inaction under insult; he had been in the man's country and power. But south of the Loire, within forty leagues of Huguenot Niort, must he still suffer, still be supine?

His rage was inflamed by a disappointment he presently underwent. Looking back as they rode clear of the wooden houses of Ponts de Ce, he missed Tavannes and several of his men; and he wondered if Count Hannibal had remained on his own side of the river. It seemed possible; and in that event La Tribe and he and Carlat might deal with Badelon and the four who still escorted them. But when he looked back a minute later, Tavannes was within sight, following the party with a stern face; and not Tavannes only. Bigot, with two of the ten men who hitherto had been missing, was with him.

It was clear, however, that they brought no good news, for they had scarcely ridden up before Count Hannibal cried "Faster! faster!" in his harshest voice, and Bigot urged the horses to a quicker trot. Their course lay almost parallel with the Loire in the direction of Beaupreau; and Tignonville began to fear that Count Hannibal intended to recross the river at Nantes, where the only bridge below Angers spanned the stream. With this in view it was easy to comprehend his wish to distance his pursuers before he recrossed.

The Countess had no such thought. "They must be close upon us!" she murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order.

"Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly. "If we knew what had happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, madame. For that matter, I know what I wish he would do. And our heads are set for it."

"What?"

"Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes.

"For Vrillac?"

"Yes."

"Ah, if he would!" she cried, her face turning pale. "If he would. He would be safe there!"

"Ay, quite safe!" he answered with a peculiar intonation. And he looked at her askance.

He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into his brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve, and that they were in sympathy. And Tavannes, seeing them talking together, and noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed the same opinion, and retired more darkly into himself. The downfall of his plan for dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond compare, a plan dependent on the submission of Angers--his disappointment in this might have roused the worst passions of a better man. But there was in this man a pride on a level at least with his other passions: and to bear himself in this hour of defeat and flight so that if she could not love him she must admire him, checked in a strange degree the current of his rage. When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the rear. On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, monsieur, en avant!" and sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour, Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his heart.

Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot!--for ever, it seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church appeared; and Badelon, drawing rein, cried, "Beaupreau, madame! We stay an hour!"

It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles, while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought, and hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly, and when it had passed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when he gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But Badelon said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced. Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly. When they at last unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson, they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.

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XXXII. THE ORDEAL BY STEEL

The women for the most part fell like sacks and slept where they alighted, dead weary. The men, when they had cared for the horses, followed the example; for Badelon would suffer no fire. In less than half an hour, a sentry who stood on guard at the edge of the wood, and Tignonville and La Tribe, who talked in low voices with their backs against a tree, were the only persons who remained awake, with the exception of the Countess. Carlat had made a couch for her, and screened it with cloaks from the wind and the eye; for the moon had risen, and where the trees stood sparsest its light flooded the soil with pools of white. But Madame had not yet retired to her bed. The two men, whose voices reached her, saw her from time to time moving restlessly to and fro between the road and the little encampment. Presently she came and stood over them.

"He led His people out of the wilderness," La Tribe was saying; "out of the trouble of Paris, out of the trouble of Angers, and always, always southward. If you do not in this, monsieur, see His finger----"

"And Angers?" Tignonville struck in, with a faint sneer. "Has He led that out of trouble? A day or two ago you would risk all to save it, my friend. Now, with your back safely turned on it, you think all for the best."

"We did our best," the minister answered humbly. "From the day we met in Paris we have been but instruments."

"To save Angers?"

"To save a remnant."

On a sudden the Countess raised her hand. "Do you not hear horses, monsieur?" she cried. She had been listening to the noises of the night, and had paid little heed to what the two were saying.

"One of ours moved," Tignonville answered listlessly. "Why do you not lie down, madame?"

Instead of answering, "Whither is he going?" she asked. "Do you know?"

"I wish I did know," the young man answered peevishly. "To Niort, it may be. Or presently he will double back and recross the Loire."

"He would have gone by Cholet to Niort," La Tribe said. "The direction is rather that of Rochelle. God grant we be bound thither!"

"Or to Vrillac," the Countess cried, clasping her hands in the darkness. "Can it be to Vrillac he is going?"

The minister shook his head.

"Ah, let it be to Vrillac!" she cried, a thrill in her voice. "We should be safe there. And he would be safe."

"Safe?" echoed a fourth and deeper voice. And out of the darkness beside them loomed a tall figure.

The minister looked and leapt to his feet. Tignonville rose more slowly.

The voice was Tavannes' "And where am I to be safe?" he repeated slowly, a faint ring of saturnine amusement in his tone.

"At Vrillac," she cried. "In my house, monsieur."

He was silent a moment. Then, "Your house, madame? In which direction is it, from here?"

"Westwards," she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with eagerness and emotion and hope. "Westwards, monsieur--on the sea. The causeway from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten hundred."

"Westwards? And how far westwards?"

Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness, the same anxiety, which spoke in hers. Nor was Count Hannibal's ear deaf to it. "Through Challans," he said, "thirteen leagues."

"From Clisson?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Comte."

"And by Commequiers less," the Countess cried.

"No, it is a worse road," Tignonville answered quickly; "and longer in time."

"But we came----"

"At our leisure, madame. The road is by Challans, if we wish to be there quickly."

"Ah!" Count Hannibal said. In the darkness it was impossible to see his face or mark how he took it. "But being there, I have few men."

"I have forty will come at call," she cried with pride. "A word to them, and in four hours or a little more----"

"They would outnumber mine by four to one," Count Hannibal answered coldly, drily, in a voice like ice-water flung in their faces. "Thank you, madame; I understand. To Vrillac is no long ride; but we will not ride it at present." And he turned sharply on his heel and strode from them.

He had not covered thirty paces before she overtook him in the middle of a broad patch of moonlight and touched his arm. He wheeled swiftly, his hand half-way to his hilt. Then he saw who it was. "Ah," he said, "I had forgotten, madame. You have come----"

"No!" she cried passionately; and standing before him she shook back the hood of her cloak that he might look into her eyes. "You owe me no blow to-day. You have paid me, monsieur. You have struck me already, and foully, like a coward. Do you remember," she continued rapidly, "the hour after our marriage, and what you said to me? Do you remember what you told me? And whom to trust and whom to suspect, where lay our interest and where our foes? You trusted me then! What have I done that you now dare--ay, dare, monsieur," she repeated fearlessly, her face pale and her eyes glittering with excitement, "to insult me? That you treat me as--Javette? That you deem me capable of that? Of luring you into a trap, and in my own house, or the house that was mine, of----"

"Treating me as I have treated others."

"You have said it!" she cried. She could not herself understand why his distrust had wounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him was gone. "You have said it, and put that between us which will not be removed. I could have forgiven blows," she continued, breathless in her excitement, "so you had thought me what I am. But now you will do well to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For were you there, and raised your hand against me--not that that touches me, but it will do--and there are those, I tell you, would fling you from the tower at my word."

"Indeed?"

"Ay, indeed! And indeed, monsieur!"

Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.

"And this is your new tone, madame, is it?" he said, slowly and after a pregnant pause. "The crossing of a river has wrought so great a change in you?"

"No!" she cried.

"Yes," he said. And despite herself she flinched before the grimness of his tone. "You have yet to learn one thing, however: that I do not change. That, north or south, I am the same to those who are the same to me. That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other, in the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my heels! I go to Vrillac----"

"You--go?" she cried. "You go?"

"I go," he repeated, "to-morrow. And among your own people I will see what language you will hold. While you were in my power I spared you. Now that you are in your own land, now that you lift your hand against me, I will show you of what make I am. If blows will not tame you, I will try that will suit you less. Ay, you wince, madame! You had done well had you thought twice before you threatened, and thrice before you took in hand to scare Tavannes with a parcel of clowns and fisherfolk. Tomorrow, to Vrillac and your duty! And one word more, madame," he continued, turning back to her truculently when he had gone some paces from her. "If I find you plotting with your lover by the way I will hang not you, but him. I have spared him a score of times; but I know him, and I do not trust him."

"Nor me," she said, and with a white, set face she looked at him in the moonlight. "Had you not better hang me now?"

"Why?"

"Lest I do you an injury!" she cried with passion; and she raised her hand and pointed northward. "Lest I kill you some night, monsieur! I tell you, a thousand men on your heels are less dangerous than the woman at your side--if she hate you."

"Is it so?" he cried. His hand flew to his hilt; his dagger flashed out. But she did not move, did not flinch, only she set her teeth; and her eyes, fascinated by the steel, grew wider.

His hand sank slowly. He held the weapon to her, hilt foremost; she took it mechanically. "You think yourself brave enough to kill me, do you?" he sneered. "Then take this, and strike, if you dare. Take it--strike, madame! It is sharp, and my arms are open." And he flung them wide, standing within a pace of her. "Here, above the collar-bone, is the surest for a weak hand. What, afraid?" he continued, as, stiffly clutching the weapon which he had put into her hand, she glared at him, trembling and astonished. "Afraid, and a Vrillac! Afraid, and 'tis but one blow! See, my arms are open. One blow home, and you will never lie in them. Think of that. One blow home, and you may lie in his. Think of that! Strike, then, madame," he went on, piling taunt on taunt, "if you dare, and if you hate me. What, still afraid! How shall I give you heart? Shall I strike you? It will not be the first time by ten. I keep count, you see," he continued mockingly. "Or shall I kiss you? Ay, that may do. And it will not be against your will, either, for you have that in your hand will save you in an instant. Even"--he drew a foot nearer--"now! Even----" And he stooped until his lips almost touched hers.

She sprang back. "Oh, do not!" she cried. "Oh, do not!" And, dropping the dagger, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into weeping.

He stooped coolly, and, after groping some time for the poniard, drew it from the leaves among which it had fallen. He put it into the sheath, and not until he had done that did he speak. Then it was with a sneer. "I have no need to fear overmuch," he said. "You are a poor hater, madame. And poor haters make poor lovers. 'Tis his loss! If you will not strike a blow for him, there is but one thing left. Go, dream of him!"

And shrugging his shoulders contemptuously he turned on his heel.

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XXXIII. THE AMBUSH

The start they made at daybreak was gloomy and ill-omened, through one of those white mists which are blown from the Atlantic over the flat lands of Western Poitou. The horses, looming gigantic through the fog, winced as the cold harness was girded on them. The men hurried to and fro with saddles on their heads, and stumbled over other saddles, and swore savagely. The women turned mutinous and would not rise; or, being dragged up by force, shrieked wild unfitting words, as they were driven to the horses. The Countess looked on and listened, and shuddered, waiting for Carlat to set her on her horse. She had gone during the last three weeks through much that was dreary, much that was hopeless; but the chill discomfort of this forced start, with tired horses and wailing women, would have darkened the prospect of home had there been no fear or threat to cloud it.

He whose will compelled all stood a little apart and watched all, silent and gloomy. When Badelon, after taking his orders and distributing some slices of black bread to be eaten in the saddle, moved off at the head of his troop, Count Hannibal remained behind, attended by Bigot and the eight riders who had formed the rearguard so far. He had not approached the Countess since rising, and she had been thankful for it. But now, as she moved away, she looked back and saw him still standing; she marked that he wore his corselet, and in one of those revulsions of feeling--which outrun man's reason--she who had tossed on her couch through half the night, in passionate revolt against the fate before her, took fire at his neglect and his silence; she resented on a sudden the distance he kept, and his scorn of her. Her breast heaved, her colour came, involuntarily she checked her horse, as if she would return to him, and speak to him. Then the Carlats and the others closed up behind her, Badelon's monotonous "Forward, madame, en avant!" proclaimed the day's journey begun, and she saw him no more.

Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog, with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in her mind. The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and battered, resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse broken by a few hills. These were little more than mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely. Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world's trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers moved, jaded phantoms in a clinging nightmare. At a walk, at a trot, more often at a weary jog, they pushed on behind Badelon's humped shoulders. Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines. Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight from they knew not what.

To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these. On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day; and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage. Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going.

"We shall be at Lege by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M. le Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset. By way of Challans!"

And always Carlat answered, "Ay, by Challans, monsieur, so be it!"

He proved, too, so far right in his prediction that noon saw them drag, a weary train, into the hamlet of Lege, where the road from Nantes to Olonne runs southward over the level of Poitou. An hour later Count Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a few minutes' parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he called Carlat to him. The old man came.

"Can we reach Vrillac to-night?" Count Hannibal asked curtly.

"By Challans, my lord," the steward answered, "I think we can. We call it seven hours' riding from here."

"And that route is the shortest?"

"In time, M. le Comte, the road being better."

Count Hannibal bent his brows. "And the other way?" he said.

"Is by Commequiers, my lord. It is shorter in distance."

"By how much!"

"Two leagues. But there are fordings and a salt marsh; and with Madame and the women----"

"It would be longer?"

The steward hesitated. "I think so," he said slowly, his eyes wandering to the grey misty landscape, against which the poor hovels of the village stood out naked and comfortless. A low thicket of oaks sheltered the place from southwesterly gales. On the other three sides it lay open.

"Very good," Tavannes said curtly. "Be ready to start in ten minutes. You will guide us."

But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to start, to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found. To peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through the hamlet proved equally fruitless. The only person who had seen him since his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M. de Tignonville; and he had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move off--as he believed--by the Challans road.

"Ahead of us!"

"Yes, M. le Comte," Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing in the direction of the fringe of trees. "I did not see him take the road, but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last. Thereabouts!" and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound round the flank of the wood. "When we are beyond that point, I think we shall see him."

Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle, looked back the way he had come. Half a mile away, two or three dots could be seen approaching across the plain. He turned again. "You know the road?" he said, curtly addressing the young man.

"Perfectly. As well as Carlat."

"Then lead the way, monsieur, with Badelon. And spare neither whip nor spur. There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night."

Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth. A moment, and the main body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover the rear. The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the wood than the trees faded out of sight behind them. It was not wonderful that they could not see Carlat. Objects a hundred paces from them were completely hidden.

Trot, trot! Trot, trot! through a. grey world so featureless, so unreal that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking, seemed to themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare. A trot and then a walk, and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated, while the women bumped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses stumbled, and the men swore at them.

Ha! La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans. The Countess raised her head, and began to look about her. There, should be a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by wizards, or the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the westward, the great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier. The mist hid all, but the knowledge that they were there set her heart beating, brought tears to her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.

At Challans they halted half-an-hour, and washed out the horses' mouths with water and a little guignolet--the spirit of the country. A dose of the cordial was administered to the women; and a little after seven they began the last stage of the journey, through a landscape which even the mist could not veil from the eyes of love. There rose the windmill of Soullans! There the old dolmen, beneath which the grey wolf that ate the two children of Tornic had its lair. For a mile back they had been treading my lady's land; they had only two more leagues to ride, and one of those was crumbling under each dogged footfall. The salt flavour, which is new life to the shore-born, was in the fleecy reek which floated by them, now thinner, now more opaque; and almost they could hear the dull thunder of the Biscay waves falling on the rocks.

Tignonville looked back at her and smiled. She caught the look; she fancied that she understood it and his thoughts. But her own eyes were moist at the moment with tears, and what his said, and what there was of strangeness in his glance, half-warning, half-exultant, escaped her. For there, not a mile before them, where the low hills about the fishing village began to rise from the dull inland level--hills green on the land side, bare and scarped towards the sea and the island--she espied the wayside chapel at which the nurse of her early childhood had told her beads. Where it stood, the road from Commequiers and the road she travelled became one: a short mile thence, after winding among the hillocks, it ran down to the beach and the causeway--and to her home.

At the sight she bethought herself of Carlat, and calling to M. de Tignonville she asked him what he thought of the steward's continued absence.

"He must have outpaced us!" he answered with an odd laugh.

"But he must have ridden hard to do that."

He reined back to her. "Say nothing!" he muttered under his breath. "But look ahead, madame, and see if we are expected!"

"Expected? How can we be expected?" she cried. The colour rushed into her face.

He put his finger to his lip, and looked warningly at Badelon's humped shoulders, jogging up and down in front of them. Then, stooping towards her, in a lower tone, "If Carlat has arrived before us, he will have told them," he said.

"Have told them!" she exclaimed.

"He came by the other road, and it is quicker."

She gazed at him in astonishment, her lips parted; and slowly she comprehended, and her eyes grew hard. "Then why," she said, "did you say it was longer? Had we been overtaken, monsieur, we had had you to thank for it, it seems!"

He bit his lip. "But we have not been overtaken," he rejoined. "On the contrary, you have me to thank for something quite different."

"As unwelcome, perhaps!" she retorted. "For what?"

"Softly, madame."

"For what?" she repeated, refusing to lower her voice. "Speak, monsieur, if you please." He had never seen her look at him in that way.

"For the fact," he answered, stung by her look and tone, "that when you arrive you will find yourself mistress in your own house! Is that nothing?"

"You have called in my people?"

"Carlat has done so, or should have," he answered. "Henceforth," he continued, a ring of exultation in his voice, "it will go hard with M. le Comte, if he does not treat you better than he has treated you hitherto. That is all!"

"You mean that it will go hard with him in any case?" she cried, her bosom rising and falling.

"I mean, madame---- But there they are! Good Carlat! Brave Carlat! He has done well."

"Carlat?"

"Ay, there they are! And you are mistress in your own land! At last you are mistress, and you have me to thank for it! See!" And heedless in his exultation whether Badelon understood or not, he pointed to a place before them where the road wound between two low hills. Over the green shoulder of one of these, a dozen bright points caught and reflected the last evening light; while as he spoke a man rose to his feet on the hill-side above, and began to make signs to persons below. A pennon, too, showed an instant over the shoulder, fluttered, and was gone.

Badelon looked as they looked. The next instant he uttered a low oath, and dragged his horse across the front of the party. "Pierre!" he cried to the man on his left, "Ride for your life! To my lord, and tell him we are ambushed!" And as the trained soldier wheeled about and spurred away, the sacker of Rome turned a dark scowling face on Tignonville. "If this be your work," he hissed, "we shall thank you for it in hell! For it is where most of us will lie to-night! They are Montsoreau's spears, and they have those with them are worse to deal with than themselves!" Then in a different tone, and throwing off all disguise, "Men to the front!" he shouted. "And you, madame, to the rear quickly, and the women with you! Now, men, forward, and draw! Steady! Steady! They are coming!"

There was an instant of confusion, disorder, panic; horses jostling one another, women screaming and clutching at men, men shaking them off and forcing their way to the van. Fortunately the enemy did not fall on at once, as Badelon expected, but after showing themselves in the mouth of the valley, at a distance of three hundred paces, hung for some reason irresolute. This gave Badelon time to array his seven swords in front; but real resistance was out of the question, as he knew. And to none seemed less in question than to Tignonville.

When the truth, and what he had done, broke on the young man, he sat a moment motionless with horror. It was only when Badelon had twice summoned him with opprobrious words that he awoke to the relief of action. Even after that he hung an instant trying to meet the Countess's eyes, despair in his own; but it was not to be. She had turned her head, and was looking back, as if thence only and not from him could help come. It was not to him she turned; and he saw it, and the justice of it. And silent, grim, more formidable even than old Badelon, the veteran fighter, who knew all the tricks and shifts of the melee, he spurred to the flank of the line.

"Now, steady!" Badelon cried again, seeing that the enemy were beginning to move. "Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming! Stand! Stand!"

The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the nick of time. He stood in his stirrups and looked back. Yes, Count Hannibal was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men. The odds were still desperate--for he brought but six--the enemy were still three to one. But the thunder of his hoofs as he came up checked for a moment the enemy's onset; and before Montsoreau's people got started again Count Hannibal had ridden up abreast of the women, and the Countess, looking at him, knew that, desperate as was their strait, she had not looked behind in vain. The glow of battle, the stress of the moment, had displaced the cloud from his face; the joy of the born fighter lightened in his eye. His voice rang clear and loud above the press.

"Badelon! wait you and two with madame!" he cried. "Follow at fifty paces' distance, and, when we have broken them, ride through! The others with me! Now forward, men, and show your teeth! A Tavannes! A Tavannes! A Tavannes! We carry it yet!"

And he dashed forward, leading them on, leaving the women behind; and down the sward to meet him, thundering in double line, came Montsoreau's men-at-arms, and with the men-at-arms, a dozen pale, fierce eyed men in the Church's black, yelling the Church's curses. Madame's heart grew sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged him by the fast-failing light a horse's length before his men--with only Tignonville beside him.

She held her breath--would the shock never come? If Badelon had not seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to anyone, who it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those on her right and on her left, she could not tell. For Badelon dragged her on with whip and spur, and two horsemen--who obscured her view--galloped in front of her, and rode down bodily the only man who undertook to bar her passage. She had a glimpse of that man's face, as his horse, struck in the act of turning, fell sideways on him; and she knew it, in its agony of terror, though she had seen it but once. It was the face of the man whose eyes had sought hers from the steps of the church in Angers; the lean man in black, who had turned soldier of the Church--to his misfortune.

Through? Yes, through, the way was clear before them! The fight with its screams and curses died away behind them. The horses swayed and all but sank under them. But Badelon knew it no time for mercy; iron-shod hoofs rang on the road behind, and at any moment the pursuers might be on their heels. He flogged on until the cots of the hamlet appeared on either side of the way; on, until the road forked and the Countess with strange readiness cried "The left!" on, until the beach appeared below them at the foot of a sharp pitch, and beyond the beach the slow heaving grey of the ocean.

The tide was high. The causeway ran through it, a mere thread lipped by the darkling waves, and at the sight a grunt of relief broke from Badelon. For at the end of the causeway, black against the western sky, rose the gateway and towers of Vrillac; and he saw that, as the Countess had said, it was a place ten men could hold against ten hundred!

They stumbled down the beach, reached the causeway and trotted along it; more slowly now, and looking back. The other women had followed by hook or by crook, some crying hysterically, yet clinging to their horses and even urging them; and in a medley, the causeway clear behind them and no one following, they reached the drawbridge, and passed under the arch of the gate beyond.

There friendly hands, Carlat's foremost, welcomed them and aided them to alight, and the Countess saw, as in a dream, the familiar scene, all unfamiliar: the gate, where she had played, a child, aglow with lantern-light and arms. Men, whose rugged faces she had known in infancy, stood at the drawbridge chains and at the winches. Others blew matches and handled primers, while old servants crowded round her, and women looked at her, scared and weeping. She saw it all at a glance--the lights, the black shadows, the sudden glow of a match on the groining of the arch above. She saw it, and turning swiftly, looked back the way she had come; along the dusky causeway to the low, dark shore, which night was stealing quickly from their eyes. She clasped her hands.

"Where is Badelon?" she cried. "Where is he? Where is he?"

One of the men who had ridden before her answered that he had turned back.

"Turned back!" she repeated. And then, shading her eyes, "Who is coming?" she asked, her voice insistent. "There is someone coming. Who is it? Who is it?"

Two were coming out of the gloom, travelling slowly and painfully along the causeway. One was La Tribe, limping; the other a rider, slashed across the forehead, and sobbing curses.

"No more!" she muttered. "Are there no more?"

The minister shook his head. The rider wiped the blood from his eyes, and turned up his face that he might see the better. But he seemed to be dazed, and only babbled strange words in a strange patois.

She stamped her foot in passion. "More lights!" she cried. "Lights! How can they find their way? And let six men go down the digue, and meet them. Will you let them be butchered between the shore and this?"

But Carlat, who had not been able to collect more than a dozen men, shook his head; and before she could repeat the order, sounds of battle, shrill, faint, like cries of hungry seagulls, pierced the darkness which shrouded the farther end of the causeway. The women shrank inward over the threshold, while Carlat cried to the men at the chains to be ready, and to some who stood at loopholes above, to blow up their matches and let fly at his word. And then they all waited, the Countess foremost, peering eagerly into the growing darkness. They could see nothing.

A distant scuffle, an oath, a cry, silence! The same, a little nearer, a little louder, followed this time, not by silence, but by the slow tread of a limping horse. Again a rush of feet, the clash of steel, a scream, a laugh, all weird and unreal, issuing from the night; then out of the darkness into the light, stepping slowly with hanging head, moved a horse, bearing on its back a man--or was it a man!--bending low in the saddle, his feet swinging loose. For an instant the horse and the man seemed to be alone, a ghostly pair; then at their heels came into view two figures, skirmishing this way and that; and now coming nearer, and now darting back into the gloom. One, a squat figure, stooping low, wielded a sword with two hands; the other covered him with a half-pike. And then beyond these--abruptly as it seemed--the night gave up to sight a swarm of dark figures pressing on them and after them, driving them before them.

Carlat had an inspiration. "Fire!" he cried; and four arquebuses poured a score of slugs into the knot of pursuers. A man fell, another shrieked and stumbled, the rest gave back. Only the horse came on spectrally, with hanging head and shining eyeballs, until a man ran out and seized its head, and dragged it, more by his strength than its own, over the drawbridge. After it Badelon, with a gaping wound in his knee, and Bigot, bleeding from a dozen hurts, walked over the bridge, and stood on either side of the saddle, smiling foolishly at the man on the horse.

"Leave me!" he muttered. "Leave me!" He made a feeble movement with his hand, as if it held a weapon; then his head sank lower. It was Count Hannibal. His thigh was broken, and there was a lance-head in his arm.

The Countess looked at him, then beyond him, past him into the darkness. "Are there no more?" she whispered tremulously. "No more? Tignonville--my----"

Badelon shook his head. The Countess covered her face and wept.

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XXXIV. WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?

It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the castle. The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung thick on its retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by little gave up to sight and daylight a certain thing which night had left at the end of the causeway. The first man to see it was Carlat, from the roof of the gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching, and peered anew at it through the mist, fancying himself back in the Place Ste.-Croix at Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a dream, and the return a nightmare. But rub as he might, and stare as he might, the ugly outlines of the thing he had seen persisted--nay, grew sharper as the haze began to lift from the grey, slow-heaving floor of sea. He called another man and bade him look. "What is it?" he said. "D'you see, there? Below the village?"

"'Tis a gibbet," the man answered, with a foolish laugh; they had watched all night. "God keep us from it."

"A gibbet?"

"Ay!"

"It is there to hang those they have taken, very like," the man answered, stupidly practical. And then other men came up, and stared at it and growled in their beards. Presently there were eight or ten on the roof of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the thing; and by-and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway with a white flag in his hand.

At that Carlat bade one fetch the minister. "He understands things," he muttered, "and I misdoubt this. And see," he cried after the messenger, "that no word of it come to Mademoiselle!" Instinctively in the maiden home he reverted to the maiden title.

The messenger went, and came again bringing La Tribe, whose head rose above the staircase at the moment the envoy below came to a halt before the gate. Carlat signed to the minister to come forward; and La Tribe, after sniffing the salt air, and glancing at the long, low, misty shore and the stiff ugly shape which stood at the end of the causeway, looked down and met the envoy's eyes. For a moment no one spoke. Only the men who had remained on the gateway, and had watched the stranger's coming, breathed hard.

At last, "I bear a message," the man announced loudly and clearly, "for the lady of Vrillac. Is she present?"

"Give your message!" La Tribe replied.

"It is for her ears only."

"Do you want to enter?"

"No!" The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if Madame will come to the gate, and speak to me----"

"Madame has other fish to fry," Carlat blurted out. "Do you think that she has naught to do but listen to messages from a gang of bandits?"

"If she does not listen she will repent it all her life!" the fellow answered hardily. "That is part of my message."

There was a pause while La Tribe considered the matter. In the end, "From whom do you come?" he asked.

"From His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur," the envoy answered glibly, "and from my lord Bishop of Angers, him assisting by his Vicar; and from others gathered lawfully, who will as lawfully depart if their terms are accepted. Also from M. de Tignonville, a gentleman, I am told, of these parts, now in their hands and adjudged to die at sunset this day if the terms I bring be not accepted."

There was a long silence on the gate. The men looked down fixedly; not a feature of one of them moved, for no one was surprised. "Wherefore is he to die!" La Tribe asked at last.

"For good cause shown."

"Wherefore?"

"He is a Huguenot."

The minister nodded. "And the terms!" Carlat muttered.

"Ay, the terms!" La Tribe repeated, nodding afresh. "What are they?"

"They are for madame's ear only," the messenger made answer.

"Then they will not reach it!" Carlat broke forth in wrath. "So much for that! And for yourself, see you go quickly before we make a target of you!"

"Very well, I go," the envoy answered sullenly. "But----"

"But what?" La Tribe cried, gripping Carlat's shoulder to quiet him. "But what! Say what you have to say, man! Speak out, and have done with it!"

"I will say it to her and to no other."

"Then you will not say it!" Carlat cried again. "For you will not see her. So you may go. And the black fever in your vitals."

"Ay, go!" La Tribe added more quietly.

The man turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and moved off a dozen paces, watched by all on the gate with the same fixed attention. But presently he paused; he returned. "Very well," he said, looking up with an ill grace. "I will do my office here, if I cannot come to her. But I hold also a letter from M. de Tignonville, and that I can deliver to no other hands than hers!" He held it up as he spoke, a thin scrap of greyish paper, the fly-leaf of a missal perhaps. "See!" he continued, "and take notice! If she does not get this, and learns when it is too late that it was offered----"

"The terms," Carlat growled impatiently. "The terms! Come to them!"

"You will have them?" the man answered, nervously passing his tongue over his lips. "You will not let me see her, or speak to her privately?"

"No."

"Then hear them. His Excellency is informed that one Hannibal de Tavannes, guilty of the detestable crime of sacrilege and of other gross crimes, has taken refuge here. He requires that the said Hannibal de Tavannes be handed to him for punishment, and, this being done before sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and uninjured the said M. de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac. But if you refuse"--the man passed his eye along the line of attentive faces which fringed the battlement--"he will at sunset hang the said Tignonville on the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will harry the demesne of Vrillac to its farthest border!"

There was a long silence on the gate. Some, their gaze still fixed on him, moved their lips as if they chewed. Others looked aside, met their fellows' eyes in a pregnant glance, and slowly returned to him. But no one spoke. At his back the flush of dawn was flooding the east, and spreading and waxing brighter. The air was growing warm; the shore below, from grey, was turning green. In a minute or two the sun, whose glowing marge already peeped above the low hills of France, would top the horizon.

The man, getting no answer, shifted his feet uneasily. "Well," he cried, "what answer am I to take?"

Still no one moved.

"I've done my part. Will no one give her the letter?" he cried. And he held it up. "Give me my answer, for I am going."

"Take the letter!" The words came from the rear of the group in a voice that startled all. They turned as though some one had struck them, and saw the Countess standing beside the wooden hood which covered the stairs. They guessed that she had heard all or nearly all; but the glory of the sunrise, shining full on her at that moment, lent a false warmth to her face, and life to eyes wofully and tragically set. It was not easy to say whether she had heard or not. "Take the letter," she repeated.

Carlat looked helplessly over the parapet.

"Go down!"

He cast a glance at La Tribe, but he got none in return, and he was preparing to do her bidding when a cry of dismay broke from those who still had their eyes bent downwards. The messenger, waving the letter in a last appeal, had held it too loosely; a light air, as treacherous as unexpected, had snatched it from his hand, and bore it--even as the Countess, drawn by the cry, sprang to the parapet--fifty paces from him. A moment it floated in the air, eddying, rising, falling; then, light as thistle-down, it touched the water and began to sink.

The messenger uttered frantic lamentations, and stamped the causeway in his rage. The Countess only looked, and looked, until the rippling crest of a baby wave broke over the tiny venture, and with its freight of tidings it sank from sight.

The man, silent now, stared a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, 'tis fortunate it was his," he cried brutally, "and not His Excellency's, or my back had suffered! And now," he added impatiently, "by your leave, what answer?"

What answer? Ah, God, what answer? The men who leant on the parapet, rude and coarse as they were, felt the tragedy of the question and the dilemma, guessed what they meant to her, and looked everywhere save at her. What answer? Which of the two was to live? Which die--shamefully! Which? Which?

"Tell him--to come back--an hour before sunset," she muttered.

They told him and he went; and one by one the men began to go too, and stole from the roof, leaving her standing alone, her face to the shore, her hands resting on the parapet. The light breeze which blew off the land stirred loose ringlets of her hair, and flattened the thin robe against her sunlit figure. So had she stood a thousand times in old days, in her youth, in her maidenhood. So in her father's time had she stood to see her lover come riding along the sands to woo her! So had she stood to welcome him on the eve of that fatal journey to Paris! Thence had others watched her go with him. The men remembered--remembered all; and one by one they stole shamefacedly away, fearing lest she should speak or turn tragic eyes on them.

True, in their pity for her was no doubt of the end, or thought of the victim who must suffer--of Tavannes. They, of Poitou, who had not been with him, knew nothing of him; they cared as little. He was a northern man, a stranger, a man of the sword, who had seized her--so they heard--by the sword. But they saw that the burden of choice was laid on her; there, in her sight and in theirs, rose the gibbet; and, clowns as they were, they discerned the tragedy of her role, play it as she might, and though her act gave life to her lover.

When all had retired save three or four, she turned and saw these gathered at the head of the stairs in a ring about Carlat, who was addressing them in a low eager voice. She could not catch a syllable, but a look hard, and almost cruel, flashed into her eyes as she gazed; and raising her voice she called the steward to her. "The bridge is up," she said, her tone hard, "but the gates? Are they locked?"

"Yes, Madame."

"The wicket?"

"No, not the wicket." And Carlat looked another way.

"Then go, lock it, and bring the keys to me!" she replied. "Or stay!" Her voice grew harder, her eyes spiteful as a cat's. "Stay, and be warned that you play me no tricks! Do you hear? Do you understand? Or old as you are, and long as you have served us, I will have you thrown from this tower, with as little pity as Isabeau flung her gallants to the fishes. I am still mistress here, never more mistress than this day. Woe to you if you forget it."

He blenched and cringed before her, muttering incoherently.

"I know," she said, "I read you! And now the keys. Go, bring them to me! And if by chance I find the wicket unlocked when I come down, pray, Carlat, pray! For you will have need of prayers."

He slunk away, the men with him; and she fell to pacing the roof feverishly. Now and then she extended her arms, and low cries broke from her, as from a dumb creature in pain. Wherever she looked, old memories rose up to torment her and redouble her misery. A thing she could have borne in the outer world, a thing which might have seemed tolerable in the reeking air of Paris or in the gloomy streets of Angers, wore here its most appalling aspect. Henceforth, whatever choice she made, this home, where even in those troublous times she had known naught but peace, must bear a damning stain! Henceforth this day and this hour must come between her and happiness, must brand her brow, and fix her with a deed of which men and women would tell while she lived! Oh, God--pray? Who said, pray?

"I!" And La Tribe with tears in his eyes held out the keys to her. "I, madame," he continued solemnly, his voice broken with emotion. "For in man is no help. The strongest man, he who rode yesterday a master of men, a very man of war in his pride and his valour--see him now, and----"

"Don't!" she cried, sharp pain in her voice. "Don't!" And she stopped him with her hand, her face averted. After an interval, "You come from him?" she muttered faintly.

"Yes."

"Is he--hurt to death, think you?" She spoke low, and kept her face hidden from him.

"Alas, no!" he answered, speaking the thought in his heart. "The men who are with him seem confident of his recovery."

"Do they know?"

"Badelon has had experience."

"No, no. Do they know of this?" she cried. "Of this!" And she pointed with a gesture of loathing to the black gibbet on the farther strand.

He shook his head. "I think not," he muttered. And after a moment, "God help you!" he added fervently. "God help and guide you, madame!"

She turned on him suddenly, fiercely. "Is that all you can do?" she cried. "Is that all the help you can give! You are a man. Go down, lead them out; drive off these cowards who drain our life's blood, who trade on a woman's heart! On them! Do something, anything, rather than lie in safety here--here!"

The minister shook his head sadly. "Alas, madame!" he said, "to sally were to waste life. They outnumber us three to one. If Count Hannibal could do no more than break through last night, with scarce a man unwounded----"

"He had the women!"

"And we have not him!"

"He would not have left us!" she cried hysterically.

"I believe it."

"Had they taken me, do you think he would have lain behind walls? Or skulked in safety here, while--while----" Her voice failed her.

He shook his head despondently.

"And that is all you can do?" she cried, and turned from him, and to him again, extending her arms, in bitter scorn. "All you will do? Do you forget that twice he spared your life? That in Paris once, and once in Angers, he held his hand? That always, whether he stood or whether he fled, he held himself between us and harm? Ay, always? And who will now raise a hand for him? Who?"

"Madame!"

"Who? Who? Had he died in the field," she continued, her voice shaking with grief, her hands beating the parapet--for she had turned from him--"had he fallen where he rode last night, in the front, with his face to the foe, I had viewed him tearless, I had deemed him happy! I had prayed dry-eyed for him who--who spared me all these days and weeks! Whom I robbed and he forgave me! Whom I tempted, and he forbore me! Ay, and who spared not once or twice him for whom he must now--he must now----" And unable to finish the sentence she beat her hands again and passionately on the stones.

"Heaven knows, madame," the minister cried vehemently, "Heaven knows, I would advise you if I could."

"Why did he wear his corselet?" she wailed, as if she had not heard him. "Was there no spear could reach his breast, that he must come to this? No foe so gentle he would spare him this? Or why did he not die with me in Paris when we waited? In another minute death might have come and saved us this."

With the tears running down his face he tried to comfort her. "Man that is a shadow," he said, "passeth away--what matter how? A little while, a very little while, and we shall pass!"

"With his curse upon us!" she cried. And, shuddering, she pressed her hands to her eyes to shut out the sight her fancy pictured.

He left her for a while, hoping that in solitude she might regain control of herself. When he returned he found her seated, and outwardly more composed, her arms resting on the parapet-wall, her eyes bent steadily on the long stretch of hard sand which ran northward from the village. By that route her lover had many a time come to her; there she had ridden with him in the early days; and that way they had started for Paris on such a morning and at such an hour as this, with sunshine about them, and larks singing hope above the sand-dunes, and warm wavelets creaming to the horses' hoofs!

Of all which, La Tribe, a stranger, knew nothing. The rapt gaze, the unchanging attitude only confirmed his opinion of the course she would adopt. He was thankful to find her more composed; and in fear of such a scene as had already passed between them he stole away again. He returned by-and-by, but with the greatest reluctance, and only because Carlat's urgency would take no refusal.

He came this time to crave the key of the wicket, explaining that--rather to satisfy his own conscience and the men than with any hope of success--he proposed to go half-way along the causeway, and thence by signs invite a conference. "It is just possible," he added, hesitating--he feared nothing so much as to raise hopes in her--"that by the offer of a money ransom, Madame----"

"Go," she said, without turning her head. "Offer what you please. But"--bitterly--"have a care of them! Montsoreau is very like Montereau! Beware of the bridge!"

He went and came again in half-an-hour. Then, indeed, though she had spoken as if hope was dead in her, she was on her feet at the first sound of his tread on the stairs; her parted lips and her white face questioned him. He shook his head.

"There is a priest," he said in broken tones, "with them, whom God will judge. It is his plan, and he is without mercy or pity."

"You bring nothing from--him?"

"They will not suffer him to write again."

"You did not see him?"

"No."

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XXXV. AGAINST THE WALL

In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a man sat sideways in the narrow embrasure of a loophole, to which his eyes seemed glued. The room, which formed part of the oldest block of the chateau, and was ordinarily the quarters of the Carlats, possessed two other windows, deep-set indeed, yet superior to that through which Bigot--for he it was--peered so persistently. But the larger windows looked southwards, across the bay--at this moment the noon-high sun was pouring his radiance through them; while the object which held Bigot's gaze and fixed him to his irksome seat, lay elsewhere. The loophole commanded the causeway leading shorewards; through it the Norman could see who came and went, and even the crossbeam of the ugly object which rose where the causeway touched the land.

On a flat truckle-bed behind the door lay Count Hannibal, his injured leg protected from the coverlid by a kind of cage. His eyes were bright with fever, and his untended beard and straggling hair heightened the wildness of his aspect. But he was in possession of his senses; and as his gaze passed from Bigot at the window to the old Free Companion, who sat on a stool beside him, engaged in shaping a piece of wood into a splint, an expression almost soft crept into his harsh face.

"Old fool!" he said. And his voice, though changed, had not lost all its strength and harshness. "Did the Constable need a splint when you laid him under the tower at Gaeta?"

The old man lifted his eyes from his task, and glanced through the nearest window. "It is long from noon to night," he said quietly, "and far from cup to lip, my lord!"

"It would be if I had two legs," Tavannes answered, with a grimace, half-snarl, half-smile. "As it is--where is that dagger? It leaves me every minute."

It had slipped from the coverlid to the ground. Badelon took it up, and set it on the bed within reach of his master's hand.

Bigot swore fiercely. "It would be farther still," he growled, "if you would be guided by me, my lord. Give me leave to bar the door, and 'twill be long before these fisher clowns force it. Badelon and I----"

"Being in your full strength," Count Hannibal murmured cynically.

"Could hold it. We have strength enough for that," the Norman boasted, though his livid face and his bandages gave the lie to his words. He could not move without pain; and for Badelon, his knee was as big as two with plaisters of his own placing.

Count Hannibal stared at the ceiling. "You could not strike two blows!" he said. "Don't lie to me! And Badelon cannot walk two yards! Fine fighters!" he continued with bitterness, not all bitter. "Fine bars 'twixt a man and death! No, it is time to turn the face to the wall. And, since go I must, it shall not be said Count Hannibal dared not go alone! Besides----"

Bigot stopped him with an oath that was in part a cry of pain. "D--n her!" he exclaimed in fury, "'tis she is that besides! I know it. 'Tis she has been our ruin from the day we saw her first, ay, to this day! 'Tis she has bewitched you until your blood, my lord, has turned to water. Or you would never, to save the hand that betrayed us, never to save a man----"

"Silence!" Count Hannibal cried, in a terrible voice. And rising on his elbow, he poised the dagger as if he would hurl it. "Silence, or I will spit you like the vermin you are! Silence, and listen! And you, old ban-dog, listen too, for I know you obstinate! It is not to save him. It is because I will die as I have lived, fearing nothing and asking nothing! It were easy to bar the door as you would have me, and die in the corner here like a wolf at bay, biting to the last. That were easy, old wolf-hound! Pleasant and good sport!"

"Ay! That were a death!" the veteran cried, his eyes brightening. "So I would fain die!"

"And I!" Count Hannibal returned, showing his teeth in a grim smile. "I too! Yet I will not! I will not! Because so to die were to die unwillingly, and give them triumph. Be dragged to death? No, old dog, if die we must, we will go to death! We will die grandly, highly, as becomes Tavannes! That when we are gone they may say, 'There died a man!'"

"She may say!" Bigot muttered scowling.

Count Hannibal heard and glared at him, but presently thought better of it, and after a pause, "Ay, she too!" he said. "Why not? As we have played the game--for her--so, though we lose, we will play it to the end; nor because we lose throw down the cards! Besides, man, die in the corner, die biting, and he dies too!"

"And why not?" Bigot asked, rising in a fury. "Why not? Whose work is it we lie here, snared by these clowns of fisherfolk? Who led us wrong and betrayed us? He die? Would the devil had taken him a year ago! Would he were within my reach now! I would kill him with my bare fingers! He die? And why not?"

"Why, because, fool, his death would not save me!" Count Hannibal answered coolly. "If it would, he would die! But it will not; and we must even do again as we have done. I have spared him--he's a white-livered hound!--both once and twice, and we must go to the end with it since no better can be! I have thought it out, and it must be. Only see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can reach it. And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her silk glove again--to put in her bosom!"--with a grimace and a sudden reddening of his harsh features--"if master priest come within reach of my arm, I'll send him before me, where I go."

"Ay, ay!" said Badelon. "And if you fail of your stroke I will not fail of mine! I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes! I shall be there!"

"You?"

"Ay, why not?" the old man answered quietly. "I may halt on this leg for aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude Boiteux who was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the passage under the Chatelet."

"Bah, man, you will get a new lord!"

Badelon nodded. "Ay, a new lord with new ways!" he answered slowly and thoughtfully. "And I am tired. They are of another sort, lords now, than they were when I was young. It was a word and a blow then. Now I am old, with most it is--'Old hog, your distance! You scent my lady!' Then they rode, and hunted, and tilted year in and year out, and summer or winter heard the lark sing. 'Now they are curled, and paint themselves, and lie in silk and toy with ladies--who shamed to be seen at Court or board when I was a boy--and love better to hear the mouse squeak than the lark sing."

"Still, if I give you my gold chain," Count Hannibal answered quietly, "'twill keep you from that."

"Give it to Bigot," the old man answered. The splint he was fashioning had fallen on his knees, and his eyes were fixed on the distance of his youth. "For me, my lord, I am tired, and I go with you. I go with you. It is a good death to die biting before the strength be quite gone. Have the dagger too, if you please, and I'll fit it within the splint right neatly. But I shall be there----"

"And you'll strike home?" Tavannes cried eagerly. He raised himself on his elbow, a gleam of joy in his gloomy eyes.

"Have no fear, my lord. See, does it tremble?" He held out his hand. "And when you are sped, I will try the Spanish stroke--upwards with a turn ere you withdraw, that I learned from Ruiz--on the shaven-pate. I see them about me now!" the old man continued, his face flushing, his form dilating.

"It will be odd if I cannot snatch a sword and hew down three to go with Tavannes! And Bigot, he will see my lord the Marshal by-and-by; and as I do to the priest, the Marshal will do to Montsoreau. Ho! ho! He will teach him the coup de Jarnac, never fear!" And the old man's moustaches curled up ferociously.

Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled with joy. "Old dog!" he cried--and he held his hand to the veteran, who brushed it reverently with his lips--"we will go together then! Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!"

"Touches Tavannes!" Badelon cried, the glow of battle lighting his bloodshot eyes. He rose to his feet. "Touches Tavannes! You mind at Jarnac----"

"Ah! At Jarnac!"

"When we charged their horse, was my boot a foot from yours, my lord?"

"Not a foot!"

"And at Dreux," the old man continued with a proud, elated gesture, "when we rode down the German pikemen--they were grass before us, leaves on the wind, thistle-down--was it not I who covered your bridle hand, and swerved not in the melee?"

"It was! It was!"

"And at St. Quentin, when we fled before the Spaniard--it was his day, you remember, and cost us dear----"

"Ay, I was young then," Tavannes cried in turn, his eyes glistening. "St. Quentin! It was the tenth of August. And you were new with me, and seized my rein----"

"And we rode off together, my lord--of the last, of the last, as God sees me! And striking as we went, so that they left us for easier game."

"It was so, good sword! I remember it as if it had been yesterday!"

"And at Cerisoles, the Battle of the Plain, in the old Spanish wars, that was most like a joust of all the pitched fields I ever saw--at Cerisoles, where I caught your horse? You mind me? It was in the shock when we broke Guasto's line----"

"At Cerisoles?" Count Hannibal muttered slowly. "Why, man, I----"

"I caught your horse, and mounted you afresh? You remember, my lord? And at Landriano, where Leyva turned the tables on us again."

Count Hannibal stared. "Landriano?" he muttered bluntly. "'Twas in '29, forty years ago and more! My father, indeed----"

"And at Rome--at Rome, my lord? Mon Dieu! in the old days at Rome! When the Spanish company scaled the wall--Ruiz was first, I next--was it not my foot you held? And was it not I who dragged you up, while the devils of Swiss pressed us hard? Ah, those were days, my lord! I was young then, and you, my lord, young too, and handsome as the morning----"

"You rave!" Tavannes cried, finding his tongue at last. "Rome? You rave, old man! Why, I was not born in those days. My father even was a boy! It was in '27 you sacked it--five-and-forty years ago!"

The old man passed his hands over his heated face, and, as a man roused suddenly from sleep looks, he looked round the room. The light died out of his eyes--as a light blown out in a room; his form seemed to shrink, even while the others gazed at him, and he sat down. "No, I remember," he muttered slowly. "It was Prince Philibert of Chalons, my lord of Orange."

"Dead these forty years!"

"Ay, dead these forty years! All dead!" the old man whispered, gazing at his gnarled hand, and opening and shutting it by turns. "And I grow childish! 'Tis time, high time, I followed them! It trembles now; but have no fear, my lord, this hand will not tremble then. All dead! Ay, all dead!"

He sank into a mournful silence; and Tavannes, after gazing at him awhile in rough pity, fell to his own meditations, which were gloomy enough. The day was beginning to wane, and with the downward turn, though the sun still shone brightly through the southern windows, a shadow seemed to fall across his thoughts. They no longer rioted in a turmoil of defiance as in the forenoon. In its turn, sober reflection marshalled the past before his eyes. The hopes of a life, the ambitious of a life, moved in sombre procession, and things done and things left undone, the sovereignty which Nostradamus had promised, the faces of men he had spared and of men he had not spared--and the face of one woman.

She would not now be his. He had played highly, and he would lose highly, playing the game to the end, that to-morrow she might think of him highly. Had she begun to think of him at all? In the chamber of the inn at Angers he had fancied a change in her, an awakening to life and warmth, a shadow of turning to him. It had pleased him to think so, at any rate. It pleased him still to imagine--of this he was more confident--that in the time to come, when she was Tignonville's, she would think of him secretly and kindly. She would remember him, and in her thoughts and in her memory he would grow to the heroic, even as the man she had chosen would shrink as she learned to know him.

It pleased him, that. It was almost all that was left to please him--that, and to die proudly as he had lived. But as the day wore on, and the room grew hot and close, and the pain in his thigh became more grievous, the frame of his mind altered. A sombre rage was born and grew in him, and a passion fierce and ill-suppressed. To end thus, with nothing done, nothing accomplished of all his hopes and ambitions! To die thus, crushed in a corner by a mean priest and a rabble of spearmen, he who had seen Dreux and Jarnac, had defied the King, and dared to turn the St. Bartholomew to his ends! To die thus, and leave her to that puppet! Strong man as he was, of a strength of will surpassed by few, it taxed him to the utmost to lie and make no sign. Once, indeed, he raised himself on his elbow with something between an oath and a snarl, and he seemed about to speak. So that Bigot came hurriedly to him.

"My lord?"

"Water!" he said. "Water, fool!" And, having drank, he turned his face to the wall, lest he should name her or ask for her. For the desire to see her before he died, to look into her eyes, to touch her hand once, only once, assailed his mind and all but whelmed his will. She had been with him, he knew it, in the night; she had left him only at daybreak. But then, in his state of collapse, he had been hardly conscious of her presence. Now to ask for her or to see her would stamp him coward, say what he might to her. The proverb, that the King's face gives grace, applied to her; and an overture on his side could mean but one thing, that he sought her grace. And that he would not do though the cold waters of death covered him more and more, and the coming of the end--in that quiet chamber, while the September sun sank to the appointed place--awoke wild longings and a wild rebellion in his breast. His thoughts were very bitter, as he lay, his loneliness of the uttermost. He turned his face to the wall.

In that posture he slept after a time, watched over by Bigot with looks of rage and pity. And on the room fell a long silence. The sun had lacked three hours of setting when he fell asleep. When he reopened his eyes, and, after lying for a few minutes between sleep and waking, became conscious of his position, of the day, of the things which had happened, and his helplessness--an awakening which wrung from him an involuntary groan--the light in the room was still strong, and even bright. He fancied for a moment that he had merely dozed off and awaked again; and he continued to lie with his face to the wall, courting a return of slumber.

But sleep did not come, and little by little, as he lay listening and thinking and growing more restless, he got the fancy that he was alone. The light fell brightly on the wall to which his face was turned; how could that be if Bigot's broad shoulders still blocked the loophole? Presently, to assure himself, he called the man by name.

He got no answer.

"Badelon!" he muttered. "Badelon!"

Had he gone, too, the old and faithful? It seemed so, for again no answer came.

He had been accustomed all his life to instant service; to see the act follow the word ere the word ceased to sound. And nothing which had gone before, nothing which he had suffered since his defeat at Angers, had brought him to feel his impotence and his position--and that the end of his power was indeed come--as sharply as this. The blood rushed to his head; almost the tears to eyes which had not shed them since boyhood, and would not shed them now, weak as he was! He rose on his elbow and looked with a full heart; it was as he had fancied. Badelon's stool was empty; the embrasure--that was empty too. Through its narrow outlet he had a tiny view of the shore and the low rocky hill, of which the summit shone warm in the last rays of the setting sun.

The setting sun! Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold; the shore at its foot was grey. Then he had slept long, and the time was come. He drew a deep breath and listened. But on all within and without lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull fall of a wave on the causeway. The day had been calm, but with the sunset a light breeze was rising.

He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen. An hour before sunset was the time they had named for the exchange. What did it mean? In five minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of warmth on the hillside was moving and retreating upwards. And Bigot and old Badelon? Why had they left him while he slept? An hour before sunset! Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners, and--what was that?

He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a groan from him. At the foot of the bed, overlooked until then, a woman lay prone on the floor, her face resting on her outstretched arms. She lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the loophole, her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck. A woman! Count Hannibal stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then looked again. It was no phantasm. It was the Countess; it was his wife!

He drew a deep breath, but he did not speak, though the colour rose slowly to his cheek. And slowly his eyes devoured her from head to foot, from the hands lying white in the light below the window to the shod feet; unchecked he took his fill, of that which he had so much desired--the seeing her! A woman prone, with all of her hidden but her hands: a hundred acquainted with her would not have known her. But he knew her, and would have known her from a hundred, nay from a thousand, by her hands alone.

What was she doing here, and in this guise? He pondered; then he looked from her for an instant and saw that while he had gazed at her the sun had set, the light had passed from the top of the hill; the world without and the room within were growing cold. Was that the cause she no longer lay quiet? He saw a shudder run through her, and a second; then it seemed to him--or was he going mad?--that she moaned, and prayed in half-heard words, and, wrestling with herself, beat her forehead on her arms, and then was still again, as still as death. By the time the paroxysm had passed, the last flush of sunset had faded from the sky, and the hills were growing dark.

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XXXVI. HIS KINGDOM

Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at once. Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained silent, his eyes riveted on her, until she rose from the floor. A moment later she met his gaze, and he looked to see her start. Instead she stood quiet and thoughtful, regarding him with a kind of sad solemnity, as if she saw not him only, but the dead; while first one tremor and then a second shook her frame.

At length, "It is over!" she whispered. "Patience, monsieur; have no fear, I will be brave. But I must give a little to him."

"To him!" Count Hannibal muttered, his face extraordinarily pale.

She smiled with an odd passionateness. "Who was my lover!" she cried, her voice a-thrill. "Who will ever be my lover, though I have denied him, though I have left him to die! It was just. He who has so tried me knows it was just! He whom I have sacrificed--he knows it too, now! But it is hard to be--just," with a quavering smile. "You who take all may give him a little, may pardon me a little, may have--patience!"

Count Hannibal uttered a strangled cry, between a moan and a roar. A moment he beat the coverlid with his hands in impotence. Then he sank back on the bed. "Water!" he muttered. "Water!"

She fetched it hurriedly, and, raising his head on her arm, held it to his lips. He drank, and lay back again with closed eyes. He lay so still and so long that she thought that he had fainted; but after a pause he spoke. "You have done that?" he whispered, "you have done that?"

"Yes," she answered, shuddering. "God forgive me! I have done that! I had to do that, or----"

"And is it too late--to undo it?"

"It is too late." A sob choked her voice.

Tears--tears incredible, unnatural--welled from under Count Hannibal's closed eyelids, and rolled sluggishly down his harsh cheek to the edge of his beard. "I would have gone," he muttered. "If you had spoken, I would have spared you this."

"I know," she answered unsteadily; "the men told me."

"And yet----"

"It was just. And you are my husband," she replied. "More, I am the captive of your sword, and as you spared me in your strength, my lord, I spared you in your weakness."

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu, madame!" he cried, "at what a cost!"

And that arrested, that touched her in the depths of her grief and her horror; even while the gibbet on the causeway, which had burned itself into her eyeballs, hung before her. For she knew that it was the cost to her he was counting. She knew that for himself he had ever held life cheap, that he could have seen Tignonville suffer without a qualm. And the thoughtfulness for her, the value he placed on a thing--even on a rival's life--because it was dear to her, touched her home, moved her as few things could have moved her at that moment. She saw it of a piece with all that had gone before, with all that had passed between them, since that fatal Sunday in Paris. But she made no sign. More than she had said she would not say; words of love, even of reconciliation, had no place on her lips while he whom she had sacrificed awaited his burial.

And meantime the man beside her lay and found it incredible. "It was just," she had said. And he knew it; Tignonville's folly--that and that only had led them into the snare and caused his own capture. But what had justice to do with the things of this world? In his experience, the strong hand--that was justice, in France; and possession--that was law. By the strong hand he had taken her, and by the strong hand she might have freed herself.

And she had not. There was the incredible thing. She had chosen instead to do justice! It passed belief. Opening his eyes on a silence which had lasted some minutes, a silence rendered more solemn by the lapping water without, Tavannes saw her kneeling in the dusk of the chamber, her head bowed over his couch, her face hidden in her hands. He knew that she prayed, and feebly he deemed the whole a dream. No scene akin to it had had place in his life; and, weakened and in pain, he prayed that the vision might last for ever, that he might never awake.

But by-and-by, wrestling with the dread thought of what she had done, and the horror which would return upon her by fits and spasms, she flung out a hand, and it fell on him. He started, and the movement, jarring the broken limb, wrung from him a cry of pain. She looked up and was going to speak, when a scuffling of feet under the gateway arch, and a confused sound of several voices raised at once, arrested the words on her lips. She rose to her feet and listened. Dimly he could see her face through the dusk. Her eyes were on the door, and she breathed quickly.

A moment or two passed in this way, and then from the hurly-burly in the gateway the footsteps of two men--one limped--detached themselves and came nearer and nearer. They stopped without. A gleam of light shone under the door, and someone knocked.

She went to the door, and, withdrawing the bar, stepped quickly back to the bedside, where for an instant the light borne by those who entered blinded her. Then, above the lantern, the faces of La Tribe and Bigot broke upon her, and their shining eyes told her that they bore good news. It was well, for the men seemed tongue-tied. The minister's fluency was gone; he was very pale, and it was Bigot who in the end spoke for both. He stepped forward, and, kneeling, kissed her cold hand.

"My lady," he said, "you have gained all, and lost nothing. Blessed be God!"

"Blessed be God!" the minister wept. And from the passage without came the sound of laughter and weeping and many voices, with a flutter of lights and flying skirts, and women's feet.

She stared at him wildly, doubtfully, her hand at her throat. "What?" she said, "he is not dead--M. de Tignonville?"

"No, he is alive," La Tribe answered, "he is alive." And he lifted up his hands as if he gave thanks.

"Alive?" she cried. "Alive! Oh, heaven is merciful! You are sure! You are sure?"

"Sure, Madame, sure. He was not in their hands. He was dismounted in the first shock, it seems, and, coming to himself after a time, crept away and reached St. Gilles, and came hither in a boat. But the enemy learned that he had not entered with us, and of this the priest wove his snare. Blessed be God, who put it into your heart to escape it!"

The Countess stood motionless and, with closed eyes, pressed her hands to her temples. Once she swayed as if she would fall her length, and Bigot sprang forward to support and save her. But she opened her eyes at that, sighed very deeply, and seemed to recover herself.

"You are sure?" she said faintly. "It is no trick?"

"No, madame, it is no trick," La Tribe answered. "M. de Tignonville is alive, and here."

"Here!" She started at the word. The colour fluttered in her cheek. "But the keys," she murmured. And she passed her hand across her brow. "I thought--that I had them."

"He has not entered," the minister answered, "for that reason. He is waiting at the postern, where he landed. He came, hoping to be of use to you."

She paused a moment, and when she spoke again her aspect had undergone a subtle change. Her head was high, a flush had risen to her cheeks, her eyes were bright. "Then," she said, addressing La Tribe, "do you, monsieur, go to him, and pray him in my name to retire to St. Gilles, if he can do so without peril. He has no place here--now; and if he can go safely to his home it will be well that he do so. Add, if you please, that Madame de Tavannes thanks him for his offer of aid, but in her husband's house she needs no other protection."

Bigot's eyes sparkled with joy.

The minister hesitated. "No more, madame?" he faltered. He was tender-hearted, and Tignonville was of his people.

"No more," she said gravely, bowing her head. "It is not M. de Tignonville I have to thank, but Heaven's mercy, that I do not stand here at this moment unhappy as I entered--a woman accursed, to be pointed at while I live. And the dead"--she pointed solemnly through the dark casement to the shore--"the dead lie there."

La Tribe went.

She stood a moment in thought, and then took the keys from the rough stone window-ledge on which she had laid them when she entered. As the cold iron touched her fingers she shuddered. The contact awoke again the horror and misery in which she had groped, a lost thing, when she last felt that chill.

"Take them," she said; and she gave them to Bigot. "Until my lord can leave his couch they will remain in your charge, and you will answer for all to him. Go, now, take the light; and in half-an-hour send Madame Carlat to me."

A wave broke heavily on the causeway and ran down seething to the sea; and another and another, filling the room with rhythmical thunders. But the voice of the sea was no longer the same in the darkness, where the Countess knelt in silence beside the bed--knelt, her head bowed on her clasped hands, as she had knelt before, but with a mind how different, with what different thoughts! Count Hannibal could see her head but dimly, for the light shed upwards by the spume of the sea fell only on the rafters. But he knew she was there, and he would fain, for his heart was full, have laid his hand on her hair.

And yet he would not. He would not, out of pride. Instead he bit on his harsh beard, and lay looking upward to the rafters, waiting what would come. He who had held her at his will now lay at hers, and waited. He who had spared her life at a price now took his own a gift at her hands, and bore it.

"Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes----"

His mind went back by some chance to those words--the words he had neither meant nor fulfilled. It passed from them to the marriage and the blow; to the scene in the meadow beside the river; to the last ride between La Fleche and Angers--the ride during which he had played with her fears and hugged himself on the figure he would make on the morrow. The figure! Alas! of all his plans for dazzling her had come--this! Angers had defeated him, a priest had worsted him. In place of releasing Tignonville after the fashion of Bayard and the Paladins, and in the teeth of snarling thousands, he had come near to releasing him after another fashion and at his own expense. Instead of dazzling her by his mastery and winning her by his magnanimity, he lay here, owing her his life, and so weak, so broken, that the tears of childhood welled up in his eyes.

Out of the darkness a hand, cool and firm, slid into his, clasped it tightly, drew it to warm lips, carried it to a woman's bosom. "My lord," she murmured, "I was the captive of your sword, and you spared me. Him I loved you took and spared him too--not once or twice. Angers, also, and my people you would have saved for my sake. And you thought I could do this! Oh! shame, shame!" But her hand held his always.

"You loved him," he muttered.

"Yes, I loved him," she answered slowly and thoughtfully. "I loved him." And she fell silent a minute. Then, "And I feared you," she added, her voice low. "Oh, how I feared you--and hated you!"

"And now?"

"I do not fear him," she answered, smiling in the darkness. "Nor hate him. And for you, my lord, I am your wife and must do your bidding, whether I will or no. I have no choice."

He was silent.

"Is that not so?" she asked.

He tried weakly to withdraw his hand.

But she clung to it. "I must bear your blows or your kisses. I must be as you will and do as you will, and go happy or sad, lonely or with you, as you will! As you will, my lord! For I am your chattel, your property, your own. Have you not told me so?"

"But your heart," he cried fiercely, "is his! Your heart, which you told me in the meadow could never be mine!"

"I lied," she murmured, laughing tearfully, and her hands hovered over him. "It has come back! And it is on my lips."

And she leant over and kissed him. And Count Hannibal knew that he had entered into his kingdom, the sovereignty of a woman's heart.

* * * * *

An hour later there was a stir in the village on the mainland. Lanterns began to flit to and fro. Sulkily men were saddling and preparing for the road. It was far to Challans, farther to Lege--more than one day, and many a weary league to Ponts de Ce and the Loire. The men who had ridden gaily southwards on the scent of spoil and revenge turned their backs on the castle with many a sullen oath and word. They burned a hovel or two, and stripped such as they spared, after the fashion of the day; and it had gone ill with the peasant woman who fell into their hands. Fortunately, under cover of the previous night every soul had escaped from the village, some to sea, and the rest to take shelter among the sand dunes; and as the troopers rode up the path from the beach, and through the green valley, where their horses shied from the bodies of the men they had slain, there was not an eye to see them go.

Or to mark the man who rode last, the man of the white face--scarred on the temple--and the burning eyes, who paused on the brow of the hill, and, before he passed beyond, cursed with quivering lips the foe who had escaped him. The words were lost, as soon as spoken, in the murmur of the sea on the causeway; the sea, fit emblem of the Eternal, which rolled its tide regardless of blessing or cursing, good or ill will, nor spared one jot of ebb or flow because a puny creature had spoken to the night.

THE END.

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. The Sport of Fools.

II. The King of Navarre.

III. Boot And Saddle.

IV. Mademoiselle de la Vire.

V. The Road to Blois.

VI. My Mother's Lodging.

VII. Simon Fleix.

VIII. An Empty Room.

IX. The House in the Ruelle d'Arcy.

X. The Fight on the Stairs.

XI. The Man at the Door.

XII. Maximilian de Bethune, Baron de Rosny.

XIII. At Rosny.

XIV. M. de Rambouillet.

XV. Vilain Herodes.

XVI. In the King's Chamber.

XVII. The Jacobin Monk.

XVIII. The Offer of the League.

XIX. Men call it Chance.

XX. The King's Face.

XXI. Two Women.

XXII. 'La Femme Dispose.'

XXIII. The Last Valois.

XXIV. A Royal Peril.

XXV. Terms of Surrender.

XXVI. Meditations.

XXVII. To Me, my Friends!

XXVIII. The Castle on the Hill.

XXIX. Pestilence and Famine.

XXX. Stricken.

XXXI. Under the Greenwood.

XXXII. A Tavern Brawl.

XXXIII. At Meudon.

XXXIV. ''Tis an Ill Wind.'

XXXV. 'Le Roi est Mort.'

XXXVI. 'Vive le Roi!'

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE.

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I. THE SPORT OF FOOLS

The death of the Prince of Conde, which occurred in the spring of 1588, by depriving me of my only patron, reduced me to such straits that the winter of that year, which saw the King of Navarre come to spend his Christmas at St. Jean d'Angely, saw also the nadir of my fortunes. I did not know at this time--I may confess it to-day without shame--whither to turn for a gold crown or a new scabbard, and neither had nor discerned any hope of employment. The peace lately patched up at Blois between the King of France and the League persuaded many of the Huguenots that their final ruin was at hand; but it could not fill their exhausted treasury or enable them to put fresh troops into the field.

The death of the Prince had left the King of Navarre without a rival in the affections of the Huguenots; the Vicomte de Turenne, whose turbulent ambition already began to make itself felt, and M. de Chatillon, ranking next to him. It was my ill-fortune, however, to be equally unknown to all three leaders, and as the month of December which saw me thus miserably straitened saw me reach the age of forty, which I regard, differing in that from many, as the grand climacteric of a man's life, it will be believed that I had need of all the courage which religion and a campaigner's life could supply.

I had been compelled some time before to sell all my horses except the black Sardinian with the white spot on its forehead; and I now found myself obliged to part also with my valet de chambre and groom, whom I dismissed on the same day, paying them their wages with the last links of gold chain left to me. It was not without grief and dismay that I saw myself thus stripped of the appurtenances of a man of birth, and driven to groom my own horse under cover of night. But this was not the worst. My dress, which suffered inevitably from this menial employment, began in no long time to bear witness to the change in my circumstances; so that on the day of the King of Navarre's entrance into St. Jean I dared not face the crowd, always quick to remark the poverty of those above them, but was fain to keep within doors and wear out my patience in the garret of the cutler's house in the Rue de la Coutellerie, which was all the lodging I could now afford.

Pardieu, 'tis a strange world! Strange that time seems to me; more strange compared with this. My reflections on that day, I remember, were of the most melancholy. Look at it how I would, I could not but see that my life's spring was over. The crows'-feet were gathering about my eyes, and my moustachios, which seemed with each day of ill-fortune to stand out more fiercely in proportion as my face grew leaner, were already grey. I was out at elbows, with empty pockets, and a sword which peered through the sheath. The meanest ruffler who, with broken feather and tarnished lace, swaggered at the heels of Turenne, was scarcely to be distinguished from me. I had still, it is true, a rock and a few barren acres in Brittany, the last remains of the family property; but the small sums which the peasants could afford to pay were sent annually to Paris, to my mother, who had no other dower. And this I would not touch, being minded to die a gentleman, even if I could not live in that estate.

Small as were my expectations of success, since I had no one at the king's side to push my business, nor any friend at Court, I nevertheless did all I could, in the only way that occurred to me. I drew up a petition, and lying in wait one day for M. Forget, the King of Navarre's secretary, placed it in his hand, begging him to lay it before that prince. He took it, and promised to do so, smoothly, and with as much lip-civility as I had a right to expect. But the careless manner in which he doubled up and thrust away the paper on which I had spent so much labour, no less than the covert sneer of his valet, who ran after me to get the customary present--and ran, as I still blush to remember, in vain--warned me to refrain from hope.

In this, however, having little save hope left, I failed so signally as to spend the next day and the day after in a fever of alternate confidence and despair, the cold fit following the hot with perfect regularity. At length, on the morning of the third day--I remember it lacked but three of Christmas--I heard a step on the stairs. My landlord living in his shop, and the two intervening floors being empty, I had no doubt the message was for me, and went outside the door to receive it, my first glance at the messenger confirming me in my highest hopes, as well as in all I had ever heard of the generosity of the King of Navarre. For by chance I knew the youth to be one of the royal pages; a saucy fellow who had a day or two before cried 'Old Clothes' after me in the street. I was very far from resenting this now, however, nor did he appear to recall it; so that I drew the happiest augury as to the contents of the note he bore from the politeness with which he presented it to me.

I would not, however, run the risk of a mistake, and before holding out my hand, I asked him directly and with formality if it was for me.

He answered, with the utmost respect, that it was for the Sieur de Marsac, and for me if I were he.

'There is an answer, perhaps?' I said, seeing that he lingered.

'The King of Navarre, sir,' he replied, with a low bow, 'will receive your answer in person, I believe.' And with that, replacing the hat which he had doffed out of respect to me, he turned and went down the stairs.

Returning to my room, and locking the door, I hastily opened the missive, which was sealed with a large seal, and wore every appearance of importance. I found its contents to exceed all my expectations. The King of Navarre desired me to wait on him at noon on the following day, and the letter concluded with such expressions of kindness and goodwill as left me in no doubt of the Prince's intentions. I read it, I confess, with emotions of joy and gratitude which would better have become a younger man, and then cheerfully sat down to spend the rest of the day in making such improvements in my dress as seemed possible. With a thankful heart I concluded that I had now escaped from poverty, at any rate from such poverty as is disgraceful to a gentleman; and consoled myself for the meanness of the appearance I must make at Court with the reflection that a day or two would mend both habit and fortune.

Accordingly, it was with a stout heart that I left my lodgings a few minutes before noon next morning, and walked towards the castle. It was some time since I had made so public an appearance in the streets, which the visit of the King of Navarre's Court had filled with an unusual crowd, and I could not help fancying as I passed that some of the loiterers eyed me with a covert smile; and, indeed, I was shabby enough. But finding that a frown more than sufficed to restore the gravity of these gentry, I set down the appearance to my own self-consciousness, and, stroking my moustachios, strode along boldly until I saw before me, and coming to meet me, the same page who had delivered the note.

He stopped in front of me with an air of consequence, and making me a low bow--whereat I saw the bystanders stare, for he was as gay a young spark as maid-of-honour could desire--he begged me to hasten, as the king awaited me in his closet.

'He has asked for you twice, sir,' he continued importantly, the feather of his cap almost sweeping the ground.

'I think,' I answered, quickening my steps, 'that the king's letter says noon, young sir. If I am late on such an occasion, he has indeed cause to complain of me.'

'Tut, tut!' he rejoined, waving his hand with a dandified air. 'It is no matter. One man may steal a horse when another may not look over the wall, you know.'

A man may be gray-haired, he may be sad-complexioned, and yet he may retain some of the freshness of youth. On receiving this indication of a favour exceeding all expectation, I remember I felt the blood rise to my face, and experienced the most lively gratitude. I wondered who had spoken in my behalf, who had befriended me; and concluding at last that my part in the affair at Brouage had come to the king's ears, though I could not conceive through whom, I passed through the castle gates with an air of confidence and elation which was not unnatural, I think, under the circumstances. Thence, following my guide, I mounted the ramp and entered the courtyard.

A number of grooms and valets were lounging here, some leading horses to and fro, others exchanging jokes with the wenches who leaned from the windows, while their fellows again stamped up and down to keep their feet warm, or played ball against the wall in imitation of their masters. Such knaves are ever more insolent than their betters; but I remarked that they made way for me with respect, and with rising spirits, yet a little irony, I reminded myself as I mounted the stairs of the words, 'whom the king delighteth to honour!'

Reaching the head of the flight, where was a soldier on guard, the page opened the door of the ante-chamber, and standing aside bade me enter. I did so, and heard the door close behind me.

For a moment I stood still, bashful and confused. It seemed to me that there were a hundred people in the room, and that half the eyes which met mine were women's. Though I was not altogether a stranger to such state as the Prince of Conde had maintained, this crowded anteroom filled me with surprise, and even with a degree of awe, of which I was the next moment ashamed. True, the flutter of silk and gleam of jewels surpassed anything I had then seen, for my fortunes had never led me to the king's Court; but an instant's reflection reminded me that my fathers had held their own in such scenes, and with a bow regulated rather by this thought than by the shabbiness of my dress, I advanced amid a sudden silence.

'M. de Marsac!' the page announced, in a tone which sounded a little odd in my ears; so much so, that I turned quickly to look at him. He was gone, however, and when I turned again the eyes which met mine were full of smiles. A young girl who stood near me tittered. Put out of countenance by this, I looked round in embarrassment to find someone to whom I might apply.

The room was long and narrow, panelled in chestnut, with a row of windows on the one hand, and two fireplaces, now heaped with glowing logs, on the other. Between the fireplaces stood a rack of arms. Round the nearer hearth lounged a group of pages, the exact counterparts of the young blade who had brought me hither; and talking with these were as many young gentlewomen. Two great hounds lay basking in the heat, and coiled between them, with her head on the back of the larger, was a figure so strange that at another time I should have doubted my eyes. It wore the fool's motley and cap and bells, but a second glance showed me the features were a woman's. A torrent of black hair flowed loose about her neck, her eyes shone with wild merriment, and her face, keen, thin, and hectic, glared at me from the dog's back. Beyond her, round the farther fireplace, clustered more than a score of gallants and ladies, of whom one presently advanced to me.

'Sir,' he said politely--and I wished I could match his bow--'you wished to see?'

'The King of Navarre,' I answered, doing my best.

He turned to the group behind him, and said, in a peculiarly even, placid tone, 'He wishes to see the King of Navarre.' Then in solemn silence he bowed to me again and went back to his fellows.

Upon the instant, and before I could make up my mind how to take this, a second tripped forward, and saluting me, said, 'M. de Marsac, I think?'

'At your service, sir,' I rejoined. In my eagerness to escape the gaze of all those eyes, and the tittering which was audible behind me, I took a step forward to be in readiness to follow him. But he gave no sign. 'M. de Marsac to see the King of Navarre' was all he said, speaking as the other had done to those behind. And with that he too wheeled round and went back to the fire.

I stared, a first faint suspicion of the truth aroused in my mind. Before I could act upon it, however--in such a situation it was no easy task to decide how to act--a third advanced with the same measured steps. 'By appointment I think, sir?' he said, bowing lower than the others.

'Yes,' I replied sharply, beginning to grow warm, 'by appointment at noon.'

'M. de Marsac,' he announced in a sing-song tone to those behind him, 'to see the King of Navarre by appointment at noon.' And with a second bow--while I grew scarlet with mortification--he too wheeled gravely round and returned to the fireplace.

I saw another preparing to advance, but he came too late. Whether my face of anger and bewilderment was too much for them, or some among them lacked patience to see the end, a sudden uncontrollable shout of laughter, in which all the room joined, cut short the farce. God knows it hurt me: I winced, I looked this way and that, hoping here or there to find sympathy and help. But it seemed to me that the place rang with gibes, that every panel framed, however I turned myself, a cruel, sneering face. One behind me cried 'Old Clothes,' and when I turned the other hearth whispered the taunt. It added a thousandfold to my embarrassment that there was in all a certain orderliness, so that while no one moved, and none, while I looked at them, raised their voices, I seemed the more singled out, and placed as a butt in the midst.

One face amid the pyramid of countenances which hid the farther fireplace so burned itself into my recollection in that miserable moment, that I never thereafter forgot it; a small, delicate woman's face, belonging to a young girl who stood boldly in front of her companions. It was a face full of pride, and, as I saw it then, of scorn--scorn that scarcely deigned to laugh; while the girl's graceful figure, slight and maidenly, yet perfectly proportioned, seemed instinct with the same feeling of contemptuous amusement.

The play, which seemed long enough to me, might have lasted longer, seeing that no one there had pity on me, had I not, in my desperation, espied a door at the farther end of the room, and concluded, seeing no other, that it was the door of the king's bedchamber. The mortification I was suffering was so great that I did not hesitate, but advanced with boldness towards it. On the instant there was a lull in the laughter round me, and half a dozen voices called on me to stop.

'I have come to see the king,' I answered, turning on them fiercely, for I was by this time in no mood for browbeating, 'and I will see him!'

'He is out hunting,' cried all with one accord; and they signed imperiously to me to go back the way I had come.

But having the king's appointment safe in my pouch, I thought I had good reason to disbelieve them; and taking advantage of their surprise--for they had not expected so bold a step on my part--I was at the door before they could prevent me. I heard Mathurine, the fool, who had sprung to her feet, cry 'Pardieu! he will take the Kingdom of Heaven by force!' And those were the last words I heard; for, as I lifted the latch--there was no one on guard there--a sudden swift silence fell upon the room behind me.

I pushed the door gently open and went in. There were two men sitting in one of the windows, who turned and looked angrily towards me. For the rest the room was empty. The king's walking-shoes lay by his chair, and beside them the boot-hooks and jack. A dog before the fire got up slowly and growled, and one of the men, rising from the trunk on which he had been sitting, came towards me and asked me, with every sign of irritation, what I wanted there, and who had given me leave to enter.

I was beginning to explain, with some diffidence--the stillness of the room sobering me--that I wished to see the king, when he who had advanced took me up sharply with, 'The king? the king? He is not here, man. He is hunting at St. Valery. Did they not tell you so outside?'

I thought I recognised the speaker, than whom I have seldom seen a man more grave and thoughtful for his years, which were something less than mine, more striking in presence, or more soberly dressed. And being desirous to evade his question, I asked him if I had not the honour to address M. du Plessis Mornay; for that wise and courtly statesman, now a pillar of Henry's counsels, it was.

'The same, sir,' he replied abruptly, and without taking his eyes from me. 'I am Mornay. What of that?'

'I am M. de Marsac,' I explained. And there I stopped, supposing that, as he was in the king's confidence, this would make my errand clear to him.

But I was disappointed. 'Well, sir?' he said, and waited impatiently.

So cold a reception, following such treatment as I had suffered outside, would have sufficed to have dashed my spirits utterly had I not felt the king's letter in my pocket. Being pretty confident, however, that a single glance at this would alter M. du Mornay's bearing for the better, I hastened, looking on it as a kind of talisman, to draw it out and present it to him.

He took it, and looked at it, and opened it, but with so cold and immovable an aspect as made my heart sink more than all that had gone before. 'What is amiss?' I cried, unable to keep silence. ''Tis from the king, sir.'

'A king in motley!' he answered, his lip curling.

The sense of his words did not at once strike home to me, and I murmured, in great disorder, that the king had sent for me.

'The king knows nothing of it,' was his blunt answer, bluntly given. And he thrust the paper back into my hands. 'It is a trick,' he continued, speaking with the same abruptness, 'for which you have doubtless to thank some of those idle young rascals without. You had sent an application to the king, I suppose? Just so. No doubt they got hold of it, and this is the result. They ought to be whipped.'

It was not possible for me to doubt any longer that what he said was true. I saw in a moment all my hopes vanish, all my plans flung to the winds; and in the first shock of the discovery I could neither find voice to answer him nor strength to withdraw. In a kind of vision I seemed to see my own lean, haggard face looking at me as in a glass, and, reading despair in my eyes, could have pitied myself.

My disorder was so great that M. du Mornay observed it. Looking more closely at me, he two or three times muttered my name, and at last said, 'M. de Marsac? Ha! I remember. You were in the affair of Brouage, were you not?'

I nodded my head in token of assent, being unable at the moment to speak, and so shaken that perforce I leaned against the wall, my head sunk on my breast. The memory of my age, my forty years, and my poverty, pressed hard upon me, filling me with despair and bitterness. I could have wept, but no tears came.

M. du Mornay, averting his eyes from me, took two or three short, impatient turns up and down the chamber. When he addressed me again his tone was full of respect, mingled with such petulance as one brave man might feel, seeing another so hard pressed. 'M. de Marsac,' he said, 'you have my sympathy. It is a shame that men who have served the cause should be reduced to such straits. Were it possible for me to increase my own train at present, I should consider it an honour to have you with me. But I am hard put to it myself, and so are we all, and the King of Navarre not least among us. He has lived for a month upon a wood which M. de Rosny has cut down. I will mention your name to him, but I should be cruel rather than kind were I not to warn you that nothing can come of it.'

With that he offered me his hand, and, cheered as much by this mark of consideration as by the kindness of his expressions, I rallied my spirits. True, I wanted comfort more substantial, but it was not to be had. I thanked him therefore as becomingly as I could, and seeing there was no help for it, took my leave of him, and slowly and sorrowfully withdrew from the room.

Alas! to escape I had to face the outside world, for which his kind words were an ill preparation. I had to run the gauntlet of the ante-chamber. The moment I appeared, or rather the moment the door closed behind me, I was hailed with a shout of derision. While one cried, 'Way! way for the gentleman who has seen the king!' another hailed me uproariously as Governor of Guyenne, and a third requested a commission in my regiment.

I heard these taunts with a heart full almost to bursting. It seemed to me an unworthy thing that, merely by reason of my poverty, I should be derided by youths who had still all their battles before them; but to stop or reproach them would only, as I well knew, make matters worse, and, moreover, I was so sore stricken that I had little spirit left even to speak. Accordingly, I made my way through them with what speed I might, my head bent, and my countenance heavy with shame and depression. In this way--I wonder there were not among them some generous enough to pity me--I had nearly gained the door, and was beginning to breathe, when I found my path stopped by that particular young lady of the Court whom I have described above. Something had for the moment diverted her attention from me, and it required a word from her companions to apprise her of my near neighbourhood. She turned then, as one taken by surprise, and finding me so close to her that my feet all but touched her gown, she stepped quickly aside, and with a glance as cruel as her act, drew her skirts away from contact with me.

The insult stung me, I know not why, more than all the gibes which were being flung at me from every side, and moved by a sudden impulse I stopped, and in the bitterness of my heart spoke to her. 'Mademoiselle,' I said, bowing low--for, as I have stated, she was small, and more like a fairy than a woman, though her face expressed both pride and self-will--'Mademoiselle,' I said sternly, 'such as I am, I have fought for France! Some day you may learn that there are viler things in the world--and have to bear them--than a poor gentleman!'

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before I repented of them, for Mathurine, the fool, who was at my elbow, was quick to turn them into ridicule. Raising her hands above our heads, as in act to bless us, she cried out that Monsieur, having gained so rich an office, desired a bride to grace it; and this, bringing down upon us a coarse shout of laughter and some coarser gibes, I saw the young girl's face flush hotly.

The next moment a voice in the crowd cried roughly, 'Out upon his wedding suit!' and with that a sweetmeat struck me in the face. Another and another followed, covering me with flour and comfits. This was the last straw. For a moment, forgetting where I was, I turned upon them, red and furious, every hair in my moustachios bristling. The next, the full sense of my impotence and of the folly of resentment prevailed with me, and, dropping my head upon my breast, I rushed from the room.

I believe that the younger among them followed me, and that the cry of 'Old Clothes!' pursued me even to the door of my lodgings in the Rue de la Coutellerie. But in the misery of the moment, and my strong desire to be within doors and alone, I barely noticed this, and am not certain whether it was so or not.

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II. THE KING OF NAVARRE

I have already referred to the danger with which the alliance between Henry the Third and the League menaced us, an alliance whereof the news, it was said, had blanched the King of Navarre's moustache in a single night. Notwithstanding this, the Court had never shown itself more frolicsome or more free from care than at the time of which I am speaking; even the lack of money seemed for the moment forgotten. One amusement followed another, and though, without doubt, something was doing under the surface--for the wiser of his foes held our prince in particular dread when he seemed most deeply sunk in pleasure--to the outward eye St. Jean d'Angely appeared to be given over to enjoyment from one end to the other.

The stir and bustle of the Court reached me even in my garret, and contributed to make that Christmas, which fell on a Sunday, a trial almost beyond sufferance. All day long the rattle of hoofs on the pavement, and the laughter of riders bent on diversion, came up to me, making the hard stool seem harder, the bare walls more bare, and increasing a hundredfold the solitary gloom in which I sat. For as sunshine deepens the shadows which fall athwart it, and no silence is like that which follows the explosion of a mine, so sadness and poverty are never more intolerable than when hope and wealth rub elbows with them.

True, the great sermon which M. d'Amours preached in the market-house on the morning of Christmas-day cheered me, as it cheered all the more sober spirits. I was present myself, sitting in an obscure corner of the building, and heard the famous prediction, which was so soon to be fulfilled. 'Sire,' said the preacher, turning to the King, of Navarre, and referring, with the boldness that ever characterised that great man and noble Christian, to the attempt then being made to exclude the prince from the succession--'Sire, what God at your birth gave you man cannot take away. A little while, a little patience, and you shall cause us to preach beyond the Loire! With you for our Joshua we shall cross the Jordan, and in the Promised Land the Church shall be set up.'

Words so brave, and so well adapted to encourage the Huguenots in the crisis through which their affairs were then passing, charmed all hearers; save indeed, those--and they were few--who, being devoted to the Vicomte de Turenne, disliked, though they could not controvert, this public acknowledgment of the King of Navarre as the Huguenot leader. The pleasure of those present was evinced in a hundred ways, and to such an extent that even I returned to my chamber soothed and exalted, and found, in dreaming of the speedy triumph of the cause, some compensation for my own ill-fortune.

As the day wore on, however, and the evening brought no change, but presented to me the same dreary prospect with which morning had made me familiar, I confess without shame that my heart sank once more, particularly as I saw that I should be forced in a day or two to sell either my remaining horse or some part of my equipment as essential; a step which I could not contemplate without feelings of the utmost despair. In this state of mind I was adding up by the light of a solitary candle the few coins I had left, when I heard footsteps ascending the stairs. I made them out to be the steps of two persons, and was still lost in conjectures who they might be, when a hand knocked gently at my door.

Fearing another trick, I did not at once open, the more as there was something stealthy and insinuating in the knock. Thereupon my visitors held a whispered consultation; then they, knocked again. I asked loudly who was there, but to this they did not choose to give any answer, while I, on my part, determined not to open until they did. The door was strong, and I smiled grimly at the thought that this time they would have their trouble for their pains.

To my surprise, however, they did not desist, and go away, as I expected, but continued to knock at intervals and whisper much between times. More than once they called me softly by name and bade me open, but as they steadily refrained from saying who they were, I sat still. Occasionally I heard them laugh, but under their breath as it were; and persuaded by this that they were bent on a frolic, I might have persisted in my silence until midnight, which was not more than two hours off, had not a slight sound, as of a rat gnawing behind the wainscot, drawn my attention to the door. Raising my candle and shading my eyes I espied something small and bright protruding beneath it, and sprang up, thinking they were about to prise it in. To my surprise, however, I could discover, on taking the candle to the threshold, nothing more threatening than a couple of gold livres, which had been thrust through the crevice between the door and the floor.

My astonishment may be conceived. I stood for full a minute staring at the coins, the candle in my hand. Then, reflecting that the young sparks at the Court would be very unlikely to spend such a sum on a jest, I hesitated no longer, but putting down the candle, drew the bolt of the door, purposing to confer with my visitors outside. In this, however, I was disappointed, for the moment the door was open they pushed forcibly past me and, entering the room pell-mell, bade me by signs to close the door again.

I did so suspiciously, and without averting my eyes from my visitors. Great were my embarrassment and confusion, therefore, when, the door being shut, they dropped their cloaks one after the other, and I saw before me M. du Mornay and the well-known figure of the King of Navarre.

They seemed so much diverted, looking at one another and laughing, that for a moment I thought some chance resemblance deceived me, and that here were my jokers again. Hence while a man might count ten I stood staring; and the king was the first to speak. 'We have made no mistake, Du Mornay, have we?' he said, casting a laughing glance at me.

'No, sire,' Du Mornay answered. 'This is the Sieur de Marsac, the gentleman whom I mentioned to you.'

I hastened, confused, wondering, and with a hundred apologies, to pay my respects to the king. He speedily cut me short, however, saying, with an air of much kindness, 'Of Marsac, in Brittany, I think, sir?'

'The same, sire.'

'Then you are of the family of Bonne?'

'I am the last survivor of that family, sire,' I answered respectfully.

'It has played its part,' he rejoined. And therewith he took his seat on my stool with an easy grace which charmed me. 'Your motto is "Bonne foi," is it not? And Marsac, if I remember rightly, is not far from Rennes, on the Vilaine?'

I answered that it Was, adding, with a full heart, that it grieved me to be compelled to receive so great a prince in so poor a lodging.

'Well, I confess,' Du Mornay struck in, looking carelessly round him, 'you have a queer taste, M. de Marsac, in the arrangement of your furniture. You--'

'Mornay!' the king cried sharply.

'Sire?'

'Chut! your elbow is in the candle. Beware of it!'

But I well understood him. If my heart had been full before, it overflowed now. Poverty is not so shameful as the shifts to which it drives men. I had been compelled some days before, in order to make as good a show as possible--since it is the undoubted duty of a gentleman to hide his nakedness from impertinent eyes, and especially from the eyes of the canaille, who are wont to judge from externals--to remove such of my furniture and equipage as remained to that side of the room, which was visible from without when the door was open. This left the farther side of the room vacant and bare. To anyone within doors the artifice was, of course, apparent, and I am bound to say that M. du Mornay's words brought the blood to my brow.

I rejoiced, however, a moment later that he had uttered them; for without them I might never have known, or known so early, the kindness of heart and singular quickness of apprehension which ever distinguished the king, my master. So, in my heart, I began to call him from that hour.

The King of Navarre was at this time thirty-five years old, his hair brown, his complexion ruddy, his moustache, on one side at least, beginning to turn grey. His features, which Nature had cast in a harsh and imperious mould, were relieved by a constant sparkle and animation such as I have never seen in any other man, but in him became ever more conspicuous in gloomy and perilous times. Inured to danger from his earliest youth, he had come to enjoy it as others a festival, hailing its advent with a reckless gaiety which astonished even brave men, and led others to think him the least prudent of mankind. Yet such he was not: nay, he was the opposite of this. Never did Marshal of France make more careful dispositions for a battle--albeit once in it he bore himself like any captain of horse--nor ever did Du Mornay himself sit down to a conference with a more accurate knowledge of affairs. His prodigious wit and the affability of his manners, while they endeared him to his servants, again and again blinded his adversaries; who, thinking that so much brilliance could arise only from a shallow nature, found when it was too late that they had been outwitted by him whom they contemptuously styled the Prince of Bearn, a man a hundredfold more astute than themselves, and master alike of pen and sword.

Much of this, which all the world now knows, I learned afterwards. At the moment I could think of little save the king's kindness; to which he added by insisting that I should sit on the bed while we talked. 'You wonder, M. de Marsac,' he said, 'what brings me here, and why I have come to you instead of sending for you? Still more, perhaps, why I have come to you at night and with such precautions? I will tell you. But first, that my coming may not fill you with false hopes, let me say frankly, that though I may relieve your present necessities, whether you fall into the plan I am going to mention, or not, I cannot take you into my service; wherein, indeed, every post is doubly filled. Du Mornay mentioned your name to me, but in fairness to others I had to answer that I could do nothing.'

I am bound to confess that this strange exordium dashed hopes which had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King of Navarre was sufficient happiness for me.

'Nay, but that honour I must take from you' he replied, smiling; 'though I see that you would make an excellent courtier--far better than Du Mornay here, who never in his life made so pretty a speech. For I must lay my commands on you to keep this visit a secret, M. de Marsac. Should but the slightest whisper of it get abroad, your usefulness, as far as I am concerned, would be gone, and gone for good!'

So remarkable a statement filled me with wonder I could scarcely disguise. It was with difficulty I found words to assure the king that his commands should be faithfully obeyed.

'Of that I am sure,' he answered with the utmost kindness. 'Were I not, and sure, too, from what I am told of your gallantry when my cousin took Brouage, that you are a man of deeds rather than words, I should not be here with the proposition I am going to lay before you. It is this. I can give you no hope of public employment, M. de Marsac, but I can offer you an adventure--if adventures be to your taste--as dangerous and as thankless as any Amadis ever undertook.'

'As thankless, sire?' I stammered, doubting if I had heard aright, the expression was so strange.

'As thankless,' he answered, his keen eyes seeming to read my soul. 'I am frank with you, you see, sir,' he continued, carelessly. 'I can suggest this adventure--it is for the good of the State--I can do no more. The King of Navarre cannot appear in it, nor can he protect you. Succeed or fail in it, you stand alone. The only promise I make is, that if it ever be safe for me to acknowledge the act, I will reward the doer.'

He paused, and for a few moments I stared at him in sheer amazement. What did he mean? Were he and the other real figures, or was I dreaming?

'Do you understand?' he asked at length, with a touch of impatience.

'Yes, sire, I think I do,' I murmured, very certain in truth and reality that I did not.

'What do you say, then--yes or no?' he rejoined. 'Will you undertake the adventure, or would you hear more before you make up your mind?'

I hesitated. Had I been a younger man by ten years I should doubtless have cried assent there and then, having been all my life ready enough to embark on such enterprises as offered a chance of distinction. But something in the strangeness of the king's preface, although I had it in my heart to die for him, gave me check, and I answered, with an air of great humility, 'You will think me but a poor courtier now, sire, yet he is a fool who jumps into a ditch without measuring the depth. I would fain, if I may say it without disrespect, hear all that you can tell me.'

'Then I fear,' he answered quickly, 'if you would have more light on the matter, my friend, you must get another candle.'

I started, he spoke so abruptly; but perceiving that the candle had indeed burned down to the socket, I rose, with many apologies, and fetched another from the cupboard. It did not occur to me at the moment, though it did later, that the king had purposely sought this opportunity of consulting with his companion. I merely remarked, when I returned to my place on the bed, that they were sitting a little nearer one another, and that the king eyed me before he spoke--though he still swung one foot carelessly in the air--with close attention.

'I speak to you, of course, sir,' he presently went on, 'in confidence, believing you to be an honourable as well as a brave man. That which I wish you to do is briefly, and in a word, to carry off a lady. Nay,' he added quickly, with a laughing grimace, 'have no fear! She is no sweetheart of mine, nor should I go to my grave friend here did I need assistance of that kind. Henry of Bourbon, I pray God, will always be able to free his own lady-love. This is a State affair, and a matter of quite another character, though we cannot at present entrust you with the meaning of it.'

I bowed in silence, feeling somewhat chilled and perplexed, as who would not, having such an invitation before him? I had anticipated an affair with men only--a secret assault or a petard expedition. But seeing the bareness of my room, and the honour the king was doing me, I felt I had no choice, and I answered, 'That being the case, sire, I am wholly at your service.'

'That is well,' he answered briskly, though methought he looked at Du Mornay reproachfully, as doubting his commendation of me. 'But will you say the same,' he continued, removing his eyes to me, and speaking slowly, as though he would try me, 'when I tell you that the lady to be carried off is the ward of the Vicomte de Turenne, whose arm is well-nigh as long as my own, and who would fain make it longer; who never travels, as he told me yesterday, with less than fifty gentlemen, and has a thousand arquebusiers in his pay? Is the adventure still to your liking, M. de Marsac, now that you know that?'

'It is more to my liking, sire,' I answered stoutly.

'Understand this too,' he rejoined. 'It is essential that this lady, who is at present confined in the Vicomte's house at Chize, should be released; but it is equally essential that there should be no breach between the Vicomte and myself. Therefore the affair must be the work of an independent man, who has never been in my service, nor in any way connected with me. If captured, you pay the penalty without recourse to me.'

'I fully understand, sire,' I answered.

'Ventre Saint Gris!' he cried, breaking into a low laugh. 'I swear the man is more afraid of the lady than he is of the Vicomte! That is not the way of most of our Court.'

Du Mornay, who had been sitting nursing his knee in silence, pursed up his lips, though it was easy to see that he was well content with the king's approbation. He now intervened. 'With your permission, sire,' he said, 'I will let this gentleman know the details.'

'Do, my friend,' the king answered. 'And be short, for if we are here much longer I shall be missed, and in a twinkling the Court will have found me a new mistress.'

He spoke in jest and with a laugh, but I saw Du Mornay start at the words, as though they were little to his liking; and I learned afterwards that the Court was really much exercised at this time with the question who would be the next favourite, the king's passion for the Countess de la Guiche being evidently on the wane, and that which he presently evinced for Madame de Guercheville being as yet a matter of conjecture.

Du Mornay took no overt notice of the king's words, however, but proceeded to give me my directions. 'Chize, which you know by name,' he said, 'is six leagues from here. Mademoiselle de la Vire is confined in the northwest room, on the first-floor, overlooking the park. More I cannot tell you, except that her woman's name is Fanchette, and that she is to be trusted. The house is well guarded, and you will need four or five men. There are plenty of cut-throats to be hired, only see, M. de Marsac, that they are such as you can manage, and that Mademoiselle takes no hurt among them. Have horses in waiting, and the moment you have released the lady ride north with her as fast as her strength will permit. Indeed, you must not spare her, if Turenne be on your heels. You should be across the Loire in sixty hours after leaving Chize.'

'Across the Loire?' I exclaimed in astonishment.

'Yes, sir, across the Loire,' he replied, with some sternness. 'Your task, be good enough to understand, is to convoy Mademoiselle de la Vire with all speed to Blois. There, attracting as little notice as may be, you will inquire for the Baron de Rosny at the Bleeding Heart, in the Rue de St. Denys. He will take charge of the lady, or direct you how to dispose of her, and your task will then be accomplished. You follow me?'

'Perfectly,' I answered, speaking in my turn with some dryness. 'But Mademoiselle I understand is young. What if she will not accompany me, a stranger, entering her room at night, and by the window?'

'That has been thought of was the answer. He turned to the King of Navarre, who, after a moment's search, produced a small object from his pouch. This he gave to his companion, and the latter transferred it to me. I took it with curiosity. It was the half of a gold carolus, the broken edge of the coin being rough and jagged. 'Show that to Mademoiselle, my friend,' Du Mornay continued, 'and she will accompany you. She has the other half.'

'But be careful,' Henry added eagerly, 'to make no mention, even to her, of the King of Navarre. You mark me, M. de Marsac! If you have at any time occasion to speak of me, you may have the honour of calling me your friend, and referring to me always in the same manner.'

This he said with so gracious an air that I was charmed, and thought myself happy indeed to be addressed in this wise by a prince whose name was already so glorious. Nor was my satisfaction diminished when his companion drew out a bag containing, as he told me, three hundred crowns in gold, and placed it in my hands, bidding me defray therefrom the cost of the journey. 'Be careful, however,' he added earnestly, 'to avoid, in hiring your men, any appearance of wealth, lest the adventure seem to be suggested by some outside person; instead of being dictated by the desperate state of your own fortunes. Promise rather than give, so far as that will avail. And for what you must give, let each livre seem to be the last in your pouch.'

Henry nodded assent. 'Excellent advice!' he muttered, rising and drawing on his cloak, 'such as you ever give me, Mornay, and I as seldom take--more's the pity! But, after all, of little avail without this.' He lifted my sword from the table as he spoke, and weighed it in his hand. 'A pretty tool,' he continued, turning suddenly and looking me very closely in the face. 'A very pretty tool. Were I in your place, M. de Marsac, I would see that it hung loose in the scabbard. Ay, and more, man, use it!' he added, sinking his voice and sticking out his chin, while his grey eyes, looking ever closer into mine, seemed to grow cold and hard as steel. 'Use it to the last, for if you fall into Turenne's hands, God help you! I cannot!'

'If I am taken, sire,' I answered, trembling, but not with fear, 'my fate be on my own head.'

I saw the king's eyes soften at that, and his face change so swiftly that I scarce knew him for the same man. He let the weapon drop with a clash on the table. 'Ventre Saint Gris!' he exclaimed with a strange thrill of yearning in his tone. 'I swear by God, I would I were in your shoes, sir. To strike a blow or two with no care what came of it. To take the road with a good horse and a good sword, and see what fortune would send. To be rid of all this statecraft and protocolling, and never to issue another declaration in this world, but just to be for once a Gentleman of France, with all to win and nothing to lose save the love of my lady! Ah! Mornay, would it not be sweet to leave all this fret and fume, and ride away to the green woods by Coarraze?'

'Certainly, if you prefer them to the Louvre, sire,' Du Mornay answered drily; while I stood, silent and amazed, before this strange man, who could so suddenly change from grave to gay, and one moment spoke so sagely, and the next like any wild lad in his teens. 'Certainly,' he answered, 'if that be your choice, sire; and if you think that even there the Duke of Guise will leave you in peace. Turenne, I am sure, will be glad to hear of your decision. Doubtless he will be elected Protector of the Churches. Nay, sire, for shame!' Du Mornay continued, almost with sternness. 'Would you leave France, which at odd times I have heard you say you loved, to shift for herself? Would you deprive her of the only man who does love her for her own sake?'

'Well, well, but she is such a fickle sweetheart, my friend,' the king answered, laughing, the side glance of his eye on me. 'Never was one so coy or so hard to clip! And, besides, has not the Pope divorced us?'

'The Pope! A fig for the Pope!' Du Mornay rejoined with impatient heat. 'What has he to do with France? An impertinent meddler, and an Italian to boot! I would he and all the brood of them were sunk a hundred fathoms deep in the sea. But, meantime, I would send him a text to digest.'

'Exemplum?' said the king.

'Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.'

'Amen!' quoth Henry softly. 'And France is a fair and comely bride.'

After that he kept such a silence, falling as it seemed to me into a brown study, that he went away without so much as bidding me farewell, or being conscious, as far as I could tell, of my presence. Du Mornay exchanged a few words with me, to assure himself that I understood what I had to do, and then, with many kind expressions, which I did not fail to treasure up and con over in the times that were coming, hastened downstairs after his master.

My joy when I found myself alone may be conceived. Yet was it no ecstasy, but a sober exhilaration; such as stirred my pulses indeed, and bade me once more face the world with a firm eye and an assured brow, but was far from holding out before me a troubadour's palace or any dazzling prospect. The longer I dwelt on the interview, the more clearly I saw the truth. As the glamour which Henry's presence and singular kindness had cast over me began to lose some of its power, I recognised more and more surely why he had come to me. It was not out of any special favour for one whom he knew by report only, if at all by name; but because he had need of a man poor, and therefore reckless, middle-aged (of which comes discretion), obscure--therefore a safe instrument; to crown all, a gentleman, seeing that both a secret and a woman were in question.

Withal I wondered too. Looking from the bag of money on the table to the broken coin in my hand, I scarcely knew which to admire more: the confidence which entrusted the one to a man broken and beggared, or the courage of the gentlewoman who should accompany me on the faith of the other.

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III. BOOT AND SADDLE

As was natural, I meditated deeply and far into the night on the difficulties of the task entrusted to me. I saw that it fell into two parts: the release of the lady, and her safe conduct to Blois, a distance of sixty leagues. The release I thought it probable I could effect single-handed, or with one companion only; but in the troubled condition of the country at this time, more particularly on both sides of the Loire, I scarcely saw how I could ensure a lady's safety on the road northwards unless I had with me at least five swords.

To get these together at a few hours' notice promised to be no easy task; although the presence of the Court of Navarre had filled St. Jean with a crowd of adventurers. Yet the king's command was urgent, and at some sacrifice, even at some risk, must be obeyed. Pressed by these considerations, I could think of no better man to begin with than Fresnoy.

His character was bad, and he had long forfeited such claim as he had ever possessed--I believe it was a misty one? on the distaff side--to gentility. But the same cause which had rendered me destitute--I mean the death of the Prince of Conde--had stripped him to the last rag; and this, perhaps, inclining me to serve him, I was the more quick to see his merits. I knew him already for a hardy, reckless man, very capable of striking a shrewd blow. I gave him credit for being trusty, as long as his duty jumped with his interest.

Accordingly, as soon as it was light, having fed and groomed the Cid, which was always the first employment of my day, I set out in search of Fresnoy, and was presently lucky enough to find him taking his morning draught outside the 'Three Pigeons,' a little inn not far from the north gate. It was more than a fortnight since I had set eyes on him, and the lapse of time had worked so great a change for the worse in him that, forgetting my own shabbiness, I looked at him askance, as doubting the wisdom of enlisting one who bore so plainly the marks of poverty and dissipation. His great face--he was a large man--had suffered recent ill-usage, and was swollen and discoloured, one eye being as good as closed. He was unshaven, his hair was ill-kempt, his doublet unfastened at the throat, and torn and stained besides. Despite the cold--for the morning was sharp and frosty, though free from wind--there were half a dozen packmen drinking and squabbling before the inn, while the beasts they drove quenched their thirst at the trough. But these men seemed with one accord to leave him in possession of the bench at which he sat; nor did I wonder much at this when I saw the morose and savage glance which he shot at me as I approached. Whether he read my first impressions in my face, or for some other reason felt distaste for my company, I could not determine. But, undeterred by his behaviour, I sat down beside him and called for wine.

He nodded sulkily in answer to my greeting, and cast a half-shamed, half-angry look at me out of the corners of his eyes. 'You need not look at me as though I were a dog,' he muttered presently. 'You are not so very spruce yourself, my friend. But I suppose you have grown proud since you got that fat appointment at Court!' And he laughed out loud, so that I confess I was in two minds whether I should not force the jest down his ugly throat.

However I restrained myself, though my cheeks burned. 'You have heard about it, then,' I said, striving to speak indifferently.

'Who has not?' he said, laughing with his lips, though his eyes were far from merry. 'The Sieur de Marsac's appointment! Ha! ha! Why, man----'

'Enough of it now!' I exclaimed. And I dare say I writhed on my seat. 'As far as I am concerned the jest is a stale one, sir, and does not amuse me.'

'But it amuses me,' he rejoined with a grin.

'Let it be, nevertheless,' I said; and I think he read a warning in my eyes. 'I have come to speak to you upon another matter.'

He did not refuse to listen, but threw one leg over the other, and looking up at the inn-sign began to whistle in a rude, offensive manner. Still, having an object in view, I controlled myself and continued. 'It is this, my friend: money is not very plentiful at present with either of us.'

Before I could say any more he turned on me savagely, and with a loud oath thrust his bloated face, flushed with passion, close to mine. 'Now look here, M. de Marsac! he cried violently, 'once for all, it is no good! I have not got the money, and I cannot pay it. I said a fortnight ago, when you lent it, that you should have it this week. Well,' slapping his hand on the bench, 'I have not got it, and it is no good beginning upon me. You cannot have it, and that is flat!'

'Damn the money!' I cried.

'What?' he exclaimed, scarcely believing his ears.

'Let the money be!' I repeated fiercely. 'Do you hear? I have not come about it. I am here to offer you work--good, well-paid work--if you will enlist with me and play me fair, Fresnoy.'

'Play fair!' he cried with an oath.

'There, there,' I said, 'I am willing to let bygones be bygones if you are. The point is, that I have an adventure on hand, and, wanting help, can pay you for it.'

He looked at me cunningly, his eye travelling over each rent and darn in my doublet. 'I will help you fast enough,' he said at last. 'But I should like to see the money first.'

'You shall,' I answered.

'Then I am with you, my friend. Count on me till death!' he cried, rising and laying his hand in mine with a boisterous frankness which did not deceive me into trusting him far. 'And now, whose is the affair, and what is it?'

'The affair is mine,' I said coldly. 'It is to carry off a lady.'

He whistled and looked me over again, an impudent leer in his eyes. 'A lady?' he exclaimed. 'Umph! I could understand a young spark going in for such--but that's your affair. Who is it?'

'That is my affair, too,' I answered coolly, disgusted by the man's venality and meanness, and fully persuaded that I must trust him no farther than the length of my sword. 'All I want you to do, M. Fresnoy,' I continued stiffly, 'is to place yourself at my disposal and under my orders for ten days. I will find you a horse and pay you--the enterprise is a hazardous one, and I take that into account--two gold crowns a day, and ten more if we succeed in reaching a place of safety.'

'Such a place as----'

'Never mind that,' I replied. 'The question is, do you accept?'

He looked down sullenly, and I could see he was greatly angered by my determination to keep the matter to myself. 'Am I to know no more than that?' he asked, digging the point of his scabbard again and again into the ground.

'No more,' I answered firmly. 'I am bent on a desperate attempt to mend my fortunes before they fall as low as yours; and that is as much as I mean to tell living man. If you are loth to risk your life with your eyes shut, say so, and I will go to someone else.'

But he was not in a position, as I well knew, to refuse such an offer, and presently he accepted it with a fresh semblance of heartiness. I told him I should want four troopers to escort us, and these he offered to procure, saying that he knew just the knaves to suit me. I bade him hire two only, however, being too wise to put myself altogether in his hands; and then, having given him money to buy himself a horse--I made it a term that the men should bring their own--and named a rendezvous for the first hour after noon, I parted from him and went rather sadly away.

For I began to see that the king had not underrated the dangers of an enterprise on which none but desperate men and such as were down in the world could be expected to embark. Seeing this, and also a thing which followed clearly from it--that I should have as much to fear from my own company as from the enemy--I looked forward with little hope to a journey during every day and every hour of which I must bear a growing weight of fear and responsibility.

It was too late to turn back, however, and I went about my preparations, if with little cheerfulness, at least with steadfast purpose. I had my sword ground and my pistols put in order by the cutler over whom I lodged, and who performed this last office for me with the same goodwill which had characterised all his dealings with me. I sought out and hired a couple of stout fellows whom I believed to be indifferently honest, but who possessed the advantage of having horses; and besides bought two led horses myself for mademoiselle and her woman. Such other equipments as were absolutely necessary I purchased, reducing my stock of money in this way to two hundred and ten crowns. How to dispose of this sum so that it might be safe and yet at my command was a question which greatly exercised me. In the end I had recourse to my friend the cutler, who suggested hiding a hundred crowns of it in my cap, and deftly contrived a place for the purpose. This, the cap being lined with steel, was a matter of no great difficulty. A second hundred I sewed up in the stuffing of my saddle, placing the remainder in my pouch for present necessities.

A small rain was falling in the streets when, a little after noon, I started with my two knaves behind me and made for the north gate. So many were moving this way and the other that we passed unnoticed, and might have done so had we numbered six swords instead of three. When we reached the rendezvous, a mile beyond the gate, we found Fresnoy already there, taking shelter in the lee of a big holly-tree. He had four horsemen with him, and on our appearance rode forward to meet us, crying heartily, 'Welcome, M. le Capitaine!'

'Welcome, certainly,' I answered, pulling the Cid up sharply, and holding off from him. 'But who are these, M. Fresnoy?' and I pointed with my riding-cane to his four companions.

He tried to pass the matter off with a laugh. 'Oh! these?' he said. 'That is soon explained. The Evangelists would not be divided, so I brought them all--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--thinking it likely you might fail to secure your men. And I will warrant them for four as gallant boys as you will ever find behind you!'

They were certainly four as arrant ruffians as I had ever seen before me, and I saw I must not hesitate. 'Two or none, M. Fresnoy,' I said firmly. 'I gave you a commission for two, and two I will take--Matthew and Mark, or Luke and John, as you please.'

''Tis a pity to break the party,' said he, scowling.

'If that be all,' I retorted, 'one of my men is called John. And we will dub the other Luke, if that will mend the matter.'

'The Prince of Conde,' he muttered sullenly, 'employed these men.'

'The Prince of Conde employed some queer people sometimes, M. Fresnoy,' I answered, looking him straight between the eyes, 'as we all must. A truce to this, if you please. We will take Matthew and Mark. The other two be good enough to dismiss.'

He seemed to waver for a moment, as if he had a mind to disobey, but in the end, thinking better of it, he bade the men return; and as I complimented each of them with a piece of silver, they went off, after some swearing, in tolerably good humour. Thereon Fresnoy was for taking the road at once, but having no mind to be followed, I gave the word to wait until the two were out of sight.

I think, as we sat our horses in the rain, the holly-bush not being large enough to shelter us all, we were as sorry a band as ever set out to rescue a lady; nor was it without pain that I looked round and saw myself reduced to command such people. There was scarcely one whole un-patched garment among us, and three of my squires had but a spur apiece. To make up for this deficiency we mustered two black eyes, Fresnoy's included, and a broken nose. Matthew's nag lacked a tail, and, more remarkable still, its rider, as I presently discovered, was stone-deaf; while Mark's sword was innocent of a scabbard, and his bridle was plain rope. One thing, indeed, I observed with pleasure. The two men who had come with me looked askance at the two who had come with Fresnoy, and these returned the stare with interest. On this division and on the length of my sword I based all my hopes of safety and of something more. On it I was about to stake, not my own life only--which was no great thing, seeing what my prospects were--but the life and honour of a woman, young, helpless, and as yet unknown to me.

Weighed down as I was by these considerations, I had to bear the additional burden of hiding my fears and suspicions under a cheerful demeanour. I made a short speech to my following, who one and all responded by swearing to stand by me to the death. I then gave the word, and we started, Fresnoy and I leading the way, Luke and John with the led horses following, and the other two bringing up the rear.

The rain continuing to fall and the country in this part being dreary and monotonous, even in fair weather, I felt my spirits sink still lower as the day advanced. The responsibility I was going to incur assumed more serious proportions each time I scanned my following; while Fresnoy, plying me with perpetual questions respecting my plans, was as uneasy a companion as my worst enemy could have wished me.

'Come!' he grumbled presently, when we had covered four leagues or so, 'you have not told me yet, sieur, where we stay to-night. You are travelling so slowly that----'

'I am saving the horses,' I answered shortly. 'We shall do a long day to-morrow.'

'Yours looks fit for a week of days,' he sneered, with an evil look at my Sardinian, which was, indeed, in better case than its master. 'It is sleek enough, any way!'

'It is as good as it looks,' I answered, a little nettled by his tone.

'There is a better here,' he responded.

'I don't see it,' I said. I had already eyed the nags all round, and assured myself that, ugly and blemished as they were, they were up to their work. But I had discerned no special merit among them. I looked them over again now, and came to the same conclusion--that, except the led horses, which I had chosen with some care, there was nothing among them to vie with the Cid, either in speed or looks. I told Fresnoy so.

'Would you like to try?' he said tauntingly.

I laughed, adding, 'If you think I am going to tire our horses by racing them, with such work as we have before us, you are mistaken, Fresnoy. I am not a boy, you know.'

'There need be no question of racing,' he answered more quietly. 'You have only to get on that rat-tailed bay of Matthew's to feel its paces and say I am right.'

I looked at the bay, a bald-faced, fiddle-headed horse, and saw that, with no signs of breeding, it was still a big-boned animal with good shoulders and powerful hips. I thought it possible Fresnoy might be right, and if so, and the bay's manners were tolerable, it might do for mademoiselle better than the horse I had chosen. At any rate, if we had a fast horse among us, it was well to know the fact, so bidding Matthew change with me, and be careful of the Cid, I mounted the bay, and soon discovered that its paces were easy and promised speed, while its manners seemed as good as even a timid rider could desire.

Our road at the time lay across a flat desolate heath, dotted here and there with thorn-bushes; the track being broken and stony, extended more than a score of yards in width, through travellers straying to this side and that to escape the worst places. Fresnoy and I, in making the change, had fallen slightly behind the other three, and were riding abreast of Matthew on the Cid.

'Well,' he said, 'was I not right?'

'In part,' I answered. 'The horse is better than its looks.'

'Like many others,' he rejoined, a spark of resentment in his tone--'men as well as horses, M. de Marsac. But what do you say? Shall we canter on a little and overtake the others?'

Thinking it well to do so, I assented readily, and we started together. We had ridden, however, no more than a hundred yards, and I was only beginning to extend the bay, when Fresnoy, slightly drawing rein, turned in his saddle and looked back. The next moment he cried, 'Hallo! what is this? Those fellows are not following us, are they?'

I turned sharply to look. At that moment, without falter or warning, the bay horse went down under me as if shot dead, throwing me half a dozen yards over its head; and that so suddenly that I had no time to raise my arms, but, falling heavily on my head and shoulder, lost consciousness.

I have had many falls, but no other to vie with that in utter unexpectedness. When I recovered my senses I found myself leaning, giddy and sick, against the bole of an old thorn-tree. Fresnoy and Matthew supported me on either side, and asked me how I found myself; while the other three men, their forms black against the stormy evening sky, sat their horses a few paces in front of me. I was too much dazed at first to see more, and this only in a mechanical fashion; but gradually, my brain grew clearer, and I advanced from wondering who the strangers round me were to recognising them, and finally to remembering what had happened to me.

'Is the horse hurt?' I muttered as soon as I could speak.

'Not a whit,' Fresnoy answered, chuckling, or I was much mistaken. 'I am afraid you came off the worse of the two, captain.'

He exchanged a look with the men on horseback as he spoke, and in a dull fashion I fancied I saw them smile. One even laughed, and another turned in his saddle as if to hide his face. I had a vague general sense that there was some joke on foot in which I had no part. But I was too much shaken at the moment to be curious, and gratefully accepted the offer of one of the men to fetch me a little water. While he was away the rest stood round me, the same look of ill-concealed drollery on their faces. Fresnoy alone talked, speaking volubly of the accident, pouring out expressions of sympathy and cursing the road, the horse, and the wintry light until the water came; when, much refreshed by the draught, I managed to climb to the Cid's saddle and plod slowly onwards with them.

'A bad beginning,' Fresnoy said presently, stealing a sly glance at me as we jogged along side by side, Chize half a league before us, and darkness not far off.

By this time, however, I was myself again, save for a little humming in the head, and, shrugging my shoulders, I told him so. 'All's well that ends well,' I added. 'Not that it was a pleasant fall, or that I wish to have such another.'

'No, I should think not,' he answered. His face was turned from me, but I fancied I heard him snigger.

Something, which may have been a vague suspicion, led me a moment later to put my hand into my pouch. Then I understood. I understood too well. The sharp surprise of the discovery was such that involuntarily I drove my spurs into the Cid, and the horse sprang forward.

'What is the matter?' Fresnoy asked.

'The matter?' I echoed, my hand still at my belt, feeling--feeling hopelessly.

'Yes, what is it?' he asked, a brazen smile on his rascally face.

I looked at him, my brow as red as fire. 'Oh! nothing--nothing,' I said. 'Let us trot on.'

In truth I had discovered that, taking advantage of my helplessness, the scoundrels had robbed me, while I lay insensible, of every gold crown in my purse! Nor was this all, or the worst, for I saw at once that in doing so they had effected something which was a thousandfold more ominous and formidable--established against me that secret understanding which it was my especial aim to prevent, and on the absence of which I had been counting. Nay, I saw that for my very life I had only my friend the cutler and my own prudence to thank, seeing that these rogues would certainly have murdered me without scruple had they succeeded in finding the bulk of my money. Baffled in this, while still persuaded that I had other resources, they had stopped short of that villany--or this memoir had never been written. They had kindly permitted me to live until a more favourable opportunity of enriching themselves at my expense should put them in possession of my last crown!

Though I was sufficiently master of myself to refrain from complaints which I felt must be useless, and from menaces which it has never been my habit to utter unless I had also the power to put them into execution, it must not be imagined that I did not, as I rode on by Fresnoy's side, feel my position acutely or see how absurd a figure I cut in my dual character of leader and dupe. Indeed, the reflection that, being in this perilous position, I was about to stake another's safety as well as my own, made me feel the need of a few minutes' thought so urgent that I determined to gain them, even at the risk of leaving my men at liberty to plot further mischief. Coming almost immediately afterwards within sight of the turrets of the Chateau of Chize, I told Fresnoy that we should lie the night at the village; and bade him take the men on and secure quarters at the inn. Attacked instantly by suspicion and curiosity, he demurred stoutly to leaving me, and might have persisted in his refusal had I not pulled up, and clearly shown him that I would have my own way in this case or come to an open breach. He shrank, as I expected, from the latter alternative, and, bidding me a sullen adieu, trotted on with his troop. I waited until they were out of sight, and then, turning the Cid's head, crossed a small brook which divided the road from the chase, and choosing a ride which seemed to pierce the wood in the direction of the Chateau, proceeded down it, keeping a sharp look-out on either hand.

It was then, my thoughts turning to the lady who was now so near, and who, noble, rich, and a stranger, seemed, as I approached her, not the least formidable of the embarrassments before me--it was then that I made a discovery which sent a cold shiver through my frame, and in a moment swept all memory of my paltry ten crowns from my head. Ten crowns! Alas! I had lost that which was worth all my crowns put together--the broken coin which the King of Navarre had entrusted to me, and which formed my sole credential, my only means of persuading Mademoiselle de la Vire that I came from him. I had put it in my pouch, and of course, though the loss of it only came home to my mind now, it had disappeared with the rest.

I drew rein and sat for some time motionless, the image of despair. The wind which stirred the naked boughs overhead, and whirled the dead leaves in volleys past my feet, and died away at last among the whispering bracken, met nowhere with wretchedness greater, I believe, than was mine at that moment.

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IV. MADEMOISELLE DE LA VIRE

My first desperate impulse on discovering the magnitude of my loss was to ride after the knaves and demand the token at the sword's point. The certainty, however, of finding them united, and the difficulty of saying which of the five possessed what I wanted, led me to reject this plan as I grew cooler; and since I did not dream, even in this dilemma, of abandoning the expedition, the only alternative seemed to be to act as if I still had the broken coin, and essay what a frank explanation might effect when the time came.

After some wretched, very wretched, moments of debate, I resolved to adopt this course; and, for the present, thinking I might gain some knowledge of the surroundings while the light lasted, I pushed cautiously forward through the trees and came in less than five minutes within sight of a corner of the chateau, which I found to be a modern building of the time of Henry II., raised, like the houses of that time, for pleasure rather than defence, and decorated with many handsome casements and tourelles. Despite this, it wore, as I saw it, a grey and desolate air, due in part to the loneliness of the situation and the lateness of the hour; and in part, I think, to the smallness of the household maintained, for no one was visible on the terrace or at the windows. The rain dripped from the trees, which on two sides pressed so closely on the house as almost to darken the rooms, and everything I saw encouraged me to hope that mademoiselle's wishes would second my entreaties, and incline her to lend a ready ear to my story.

The appearance of the house, indeed, was a strong inducement to me to proceed, for it was impossible to believe that a young lady, a kinswoman of the gay and vivacious Turenne, and already introduced to the pleasures of the Court, would elect of her own free will to spend the winter in so dreary a solitude.

Taking advantage of the last moments of daylight, I rode cautiously round the house, and, keeping in the shadow of the trees, had no difficulty in discovering at the north-east corner the balcony of which I had been told. It was semicircular in shape, with a stone balustrade, and hung some fifteen feet above a terraced walk which ran below it, and was separated from the chase by a low sunk fence.

I was surprised to observe that, notwithstanding the rain and the coldness of the evening, the window which gave upon this balcony was open. Nor was this all. Luck was in store for me at last. I had not gazed at the window more than a minute, calculating its height and other particulars, when, to my great joy, a female figure, closely hooded, stepped out and stood looking up at the sky. I was too far off to be able to discern by that uncertain light whether this was Mademoiselle de la Vire or her woman; but the attitude was so clearly one of dejection and despondency, that I felt sure it was either one or the other. Determined not to let the opportunity slip, I dismounted hastily and, leaving the Cid loose, advanced on foot until I stood within half-a-dozen paces of the window.

At that point the watcher became aware of me. She started back, but did not withdraw. Still peering down at me, she called softly to some one inside the chamber, and immediately a second figure, taller and stouter, appeared. I had already doffed my cap, and I now, in a low voice, begged to know if I had the honour of speaking to Mademoiselle de la Vire. In the growing darkness it was impossible to distinguish faces.

'Hush!' the stouter figure muttered in a tone of warning. 'Speak lower. Who are you, and what do you here?'

'I am here,' I answered respectfully, 'commissioned by a friend of the lady I have named, to convey her to a place of safety.'

'Mondieu!' was the sharp answer. 'Now? It is impossible.'

'No,' I murmured, 'not now, but to-night. The moon rises at half-past two. My horses need rest and food. At three I will be below this window with the means of escape, if mademoiselle choose to use them.'

I felt that they were staring at me through the dusk, as though they would read my breast. 'Your name, sir?' the shorter figure murmured at last, after a pause which was full of suspense and excitement.

'I do not think my name of much import at present, Mademoiselle,' I answered, reluctant to proclaim myself a stranger. 'When----'

'Your name, your name, sir!' she repeated imperiously, and I heard her little heel rap upon the stone floor of the balcony.

'Gaston de Marsac,' I answered unwillingly.

They both started, and cried out together. 'Impossible!' the last speaker exclaimed, amazement and anger in her tone. 'This is a jest, sir. This----'

What more she would have said I was left to guess, for at that moment her attendant--I had no doubt now which was mademoiselle and which Fanchette--suddenly laid her hand on her mistress's mouth and pointed to the room behind them. A second's suspense, and with a warning gesture the two turned and disappeared through the window.

I lost no time in regaining the shelter of the trees; and concluding, though I was far from satisfied with the interview, that I could do nothing more now, but might rather, by loitering in the neighbourhood, awaken suspicion, I remounted and made for the highway and the village, where I found my men in noisy occupation of the inn, a poor place, with unglazed windows, and a fire in the middle of the earthen floor. My first care was to stable the Cid in a shed at the back, where I provided for its wants as far as I could with the aid of a half-naked boy, who seemed to be in hiding there.

This done, I returned to the front of the house, having pretty well made up my mind how I would set about the task before me. As I passed one of the windows, which was partially closed by a rude curtain made of old sacks, I stopped to look in. Fresnoy and his four rascals were seated on blocks of wood round the hearth, talking loudly and fiercely, and ruffling it as if the fire and the room were their own. A pedlar, seated on his goods in one corner, was eyeing them with evident fear and suspicion; in another corner two children had taken refuge under a donkey, which some fowls had chosen as a roosting-pole. The innkeeper, a sturdy fellow, with a great club in his fist, sat moodily at the foot of a ladder which led to the loft above, while a slatternly woman, who was going to and fro getting supper, seemed in equal terror of her guests and her good man.

Confirmed by what I saw, and assured that the villains were ripe for any mischief, and, if not checked, would speedily be beyond my control, I noisily flung the door open and entered. Fresnoy looked up with a sneer as I did so, and one of the men laughed. The others became silent; but no one moved or greeted me. Without a moment's hesitation I stepped to the nearest fellow and, with a sturdy kick, sent his log from under him. 'Rise, you rascal, when I enter!' I cried, giving vent to the anger I had long felt. 'And you, too!' and with a second kick I sent his neighbour's stool flying also, and administered a couple of cuts with my riding-cane across the man's shoulders. 'Have you no manners, sirrah? Across with you, and leave this side to your betters.'

The two rose, snarling and feeling for their weapons, and for a moment stood facing me, looking now at me and now askance at Fresnoy. But as he gave no sign, and their comrades only laughed, the men's courage failed them at the pinch, and with a very poor grace they sneaked over to the other side of the fire and sat there scowling.

I seated myself beside their leader. 'This gentleman and I will eat here,' I cried to the man at the foot of the ladder. 'Bid your wife lay for us, and of the best you have; and do you give those knaves their provender where the smell of their greasy jackets will not come between us and our victuals.'

The man came forward, glad enough, as I saw, to discover any one in authority, and very civilly began to draw wine and place a board for us, while his wife filled our platters from the black pot which hung over the fire. Fresnoy's face meanwhile wore the amused smile of one who comprehended my motives, but felt sufficiently sure of his position and influence with his followers to be indifferent to my proceedings. I presently showed him, however, that I had not yet done with him. Our table was laid in obedience to my orders at such a distance from the men that they could not overhear our talk, and by-and-by I leant over to him.

'M. Fresnoy,' I said, 'you are in danger of forgetting one thing, I fancy, which it behoves you to remember.'

'What?' he muttered, scarcely deigning to look up at me.

'That you have to do with Gaston de Marsac,' I answered quietly. 'I am making, as I told you this morning, a last attempt to recruit my fortunes, and I will let no man--no man, do you understand, M. Fresnoy?--thwart me and go harmless.'

'Who wishes to thwart you?' he asked impudently.

'You,' I answered unmoved, helping myself, as I spoke, from the roll of black bread which lay beside me. 'You robbed me this afternoon; I passed it over. You encouraged those men to be insolent; I passed it over. But let me tell you this. If you fail me to-night, on the honour of a gentleman, M. Fresnoy, I will run you through as I would spit a lark.'

'Will you? But two can play at that game,' he cried, rising nimbly from his stool. 'Still better six! Don't you think, M. de Marsac, you had better have waited?'

'I think you had better hear one word more,' I answered coolly, keeping my seat, 'before you appeal to your fellows there.'

'Well,' he said, still standing, 'what is it?'

'Nay,' I replied, after once more pointing to his stool in vain, 'if you prefer to take my orders standing, well and good.'

'Your orders?' he shrieked, growing suddenly excited.

'Yes, my orders!' I retorted, rising as suddenly to my feet and hitching forward my sword. 'My orders, sir,' I repeated fiercely, 'or, if you dispute my right to command as well as to pay this party, let us decide the question here and now--you and I, foot to foot, M. Fresnoy.'

The quarrel flashed up so suddenly, though I had been preparing it all along, that no one moved. The woman, indeed, fell back to her children, but the rest looked on open-mouthed. Had they stirred, or had a moment's hurly-burly heated his blood, I doubt not Fresnoy would have taken up my challenge, for he did not lack hardihood. But as it was, face to face with me in the silence, his courage failed him. He paused, glowering at me uncertainly, and did not speak.

'Well,' I said, 'don't you think that if I pay I ought to give orders, sir?'

'Who wishes to oppose your orders?' he muttered, drinking off a bumper, and sitting down with an air of impudent bravado, assumed to hide his discomfiture.

'If you don't, no one else does,' I answered. 'So that is settled. Landlord, some more wine.'

He was very sulky with me for a while, fingering his glass in silence and scowling at the table. He had enough gentility to feel the humiliation to which he had exposed himself, and a sufficiency of wit to understand that that moment's hesitation had cost him the allegiance of his fellow-ruffians. I hastened, therefore, to set him at his ease by explaining my plans for the night, and presently succeeded beyond my hopes; for when he heard who the lady was whom I proposed to carry off, and that she was lying that evening at the Chateau de Chize, his surprise swept away the last trace of resentment. He stared at me as at a maniac.

'Mon Dieu!' he exclaimed. 'Do you know what you are doing, Sieur?'

'I think so,' I answered.

'Do you know to whom the chateau belongs?'

'To the Vicomte de Turenne.'

'And that Mademoiselle de la Vire is his relation?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Mon Dieu!' he exclaimed again. And he looked at me open-mouthed.

'What is the matter?' I asked, though I had an uneasy consciousness that I knew--that I knew very well.

'Man, he will crush you as I crush this hat!' he answered in great excitement. 'As easily. Who do you think will protect you from him in a private quarrel of this kind? Navarre? France? our good man? Not one of them. You had better steal the king's crown jewels--he is weak; or Guise's last plot--he is generous at times; or Navarre's last sweetheart--he is as easy as an old shoe. You had better have to do with all these together, I tell you, than touch Turenne's ewe-lambs, unless your aim be to be broken on the wheel! Mon Dieu, yes!'

'I am much obliged to you for your advice,' I said stiffly, 'but the die is cast. My mind is made up. On the other hand, if you are afraid, M. Fresnoy----'

'I am afraid; very much afraid,' he answered frankly.

'Still your name need not be brought into the matter,' I replied, 'I will take the responsibility. I will let them know my name here at the inn, where, doubtless, inquiries will be made.'

'To be sure, that is something,' he answered thoughtfully. 'Well, it is an ugly business, but I am in for it. You want me to go with you a little after two, do you? and the others to be in the saddle at three? Is that it?'

I assented, pleased to find him so far acquiescent; and in this way, talking the details over more than once, we settled our course, arranging to fly by way of Poitiers and Tours. Of course I did not tell him why I selected Blois as our refuge, nor what was my purpose there; though he pressed me more than once on the point, and grew thoughtful and somewhat gloomy when I continually evaded it. A little after eight we retired to the loft to sleep; our men remaining below round the fire and snoring so merrily as almost to shake the crazy old building. The host was charged to sit up and call us as soon as the moon rose, but, as it turned out, I might as well have taken this office on myself, for between excitement and distrust I slept little, and was wide awake when I heard his step on the ladder and knew it was time to rise.

I was up in a moment, and Fresnoy was little behind me; so that, losing no time in talk, we were mounted and on the road, each with a spare horse at his knee, before the moon was well above the trees. Once in the Chase we found it necessary to proceed on foot, but, the distance being short, we presently emerged without misadventure and stood opposite to the chateau, the upper part of which shone cold and white in the moon's rays.

There was something so solemn in the aspect of the place, the night being fine and the sky without a cloud, that I stood for a minute awed and impressed, the sense of the responsibility I was here to accept strong upon me. In that short space of time all the dangers before me, as well the common risks of the road as the vengeance of Turenne and the turbulence of my own men, presented themselves to my mind, and made a last appeal to me to turn back from an enterprise so foolhardy. The blood in a man's veins runs low and slow at that hour, and mine was chilled by lack of sleep and the wintry air. It needed the remembrance of my solitary condition, of my past spent in straits and failure, of the grey hairs which swept my cheek, of the sword which I had long used honourably, if with little profit to myself; it needed the thought of all these things to restore me to courage and myself.

I judged at a later period that my companion was affected in somewhat the same way; for, as I stooped to press home the pegs which I had brought to tether the horses, he laid his hand on my arm. Glancing up to see what he wanted, I was struck by the wild look in his face (which the moonlight invested with a peculiar mottled pallor), and particularly in his eyes, which glittered like a madman's. He tried to speak, but seemed to find a difficulty in doing so; and I had to question him roughly before he found his tongue. When he did speak, it was only to implore me in an odd, excited manner to give up the expedition and return.

'What, now?' I said, surprised. 'Now we are here, Fresnoy?'

'Ay, give it up!' he cried, shaking me almost fiercely by the arm. 'Give it up, man! It will end badly, I tell you! In God's name, give it up, and go home before worse comes of it.'

'Whatever comes of it,' I answered coldly, shaking his grasp from my arm, and wondering much at this sudden fit of cowardice, 'I go on. You, M. Fresnoy, may do as you please!'

He started and drew back from me; but he did not reply, nor did he speak again. When I presently went off to fetch a ladder, of the position of which I had made a note during the afternoon, he accompanied me, and followed me back in the same dull silence to the walk below the balcony. I had looked more than once and eagerly at mademoiselle's window without any light or movement in that quarter rewarding my vigilance; but, undeterred by this, which might mean either that my plot was known, or that Mademoiselle de la Vire distrusted me, I set the ladder softly against the balcony, which was in deep shadow, and paused only to give Fresnoy his last instructions. These were simply to stand on guard at the foot of the ladder and defend it in case of surprise; so that, whatever happened inside the chateau, my retreat by the window might not be cut off.

Then I went cautiously up the ladder, and, with my sheathed sword in my left hand, stepped over the balustrade. Taking one pace forward, with fingers outstretched, I felt the leaded panes of the window and tapped softly.

As softly the casement gave way, and I followed it. A hand which I could see but not feel was laid on mine. All was darkness in the room, and before me, but the hand guided me two paces forward, then by a sudden pressure bade me stand. I heard the sound of a curtain being drawn behind me, and the next moment the cover of a rushlight was removed, and a feeble but sufficient light filled the chamber.

I comprehended that the drawing of that curtain over the window had cut off my retreat as effectually as if a door had been closed behind me. But distrust and suspicion gave way the next moment to the natural embarrassment of the man who finds himself in a false position and knows he can escape from it only by an awkward explanation.

The room in which I found myself was long, narrow, and low in the ceiling; and being hung with some dark stuff which swallowed up the light, terminated funereally at the farther end in the still deeper gloom of an alcove. Two or three huge chests, one bearing the remnants of a meal, stood against the walls. The middle of the floor was covered with a strip of coarse matting, on which a small table, a chair and foot-rest, and a couple of stools had place, with some smaller articles which lay scattered round a pair of half-filled saddle-bags. The slighter and smaller of the two figures I had seen stood beside the table, wearing a mask and riding cloak; and by her silent manner of gazing at me, as well as by a cold, disdainful bearing, which neither her mask nor cloak could hide, did more to chill and discomfit me than even my own knowledge that I had lost the pass-key which should have admitted me to her confidence.

The stouter figure of the afternoon turned out to be a red-cheeked, sturdy woman of thirty, with bright black eyes and a manner which lost nothing of its fierce impatience when she came a little later to address me. All my ideas of Fanchette were upset by the appearance of this woman, who, rustic in her speech and ways, seemed more like a duenna than the waiting-maid of a court beauty, and better fitted to guard a wayward damsel than to aid her in such an escapade as we had in hand.

She stood slightly behind her mistress, her coarse red hand resting on the back of the chair from which mademoiselle had apparently risen on my entrance. For a few seconds, which seemed minutes to me, we stood gazing at one another in silence, mademoiselle acknowledging my bow by a slight movement of the head. Then, seeing that they waited for me to speak, I did so.

'Mademoiselle de la Vire?' I murmured doubtfully.

She bent her head again; that was all.

I strove to speak with confidence. 'You will pardon me, mademoiselle,' I said, 'if I seem to be abrupt, but time is everything. The horses are standing within a hundred yards of the house, and all the preparations for your night are made. If we leave now, we can do so without opposition. The delay even of an hour may lead to discovery.'

For answer she laughed behind her mask--laughed coldly and ironically. 'You go too fast, sir,' she said, her low clear voice matching the laugh and rousing a feeling almost of anger in my heart. 'I do not know you; or, rather, I know nothing of you which should entitle you to interfere in my affairs. You are too quick to presume, sir. You say you come from a friend. From whom?'

'From one whom I am proud to call by that title,' I answered with what patience I might.

'His name!'

I answered firmly that I could not give it. And I eyed her steadily as I did so.

This for the moment seemed to baffle and confuse her, but after a pause she continued: 'Where do you propose to take me, sir?'

'To Blois; to the lodging of a friend of my friend.'

'You speak bravely,' she replied with a faint sneer. 'You have made some great friends lately it seems! But you bring me some letter, no doubt; at least some sign, some token, some warranty, that you are the person you pretend to be, M. de Marsac?'

'The truth is, mademoiselle,' I stammered, 'I must explain. I should tell you----'

'Nay, sir,' she cried impetuously, 'there is no need of telling. If you have what I say, show it me! It is you who lose time. Let us have no more words!'

I had used very few words, and, God knows, was not in the mind to use many; but, being in the wrong, I had no answer to make except the truth, and that humbly. 'I had such a token as you mention, mademoiselle,' I said, 'no farther back than this afternoon, in the shape of half a gold coin, entrusted to me by my friend. But, to my shame I say it, it was stolen from me a few hours back.'

'Stolen from you!' she exclaimed.

'Yes, mademoiselle; and for that reason I cannot show it,' I answered.

'You cannot show it? And you dare to come to me without it!' she cried, speaking with a vehemence which fairly startled me, prepared as I was for reproaches. 'You come to me! You!' she continued. And with that, scarcely stopping to take breath, she loaded me with abuse; calling me impertinent, a meddler, and a hundred other things, which I now blush to recall, and displaying in all a passion which even in her attendant would have surprised me, but in one so slight and seemingly delicate, overwhelmed and confounded me. In fault as I was, I could not understand the peculiar bitterness she displayed, or the contemptuous force of her language, and I stared at her in silent wonder until, of her own accord, she supplied the key to her feelings. In a fresh outburst of rage she snatched off her mask, and to my astonishment I saw before me the young maid of honour whom I had encountered in the King of Navarre's ante-chamber, and whom I had been so unfortunate as to expose to the raillery of Mathurine.

'Who has paid you, sir,' she continued, clenching her small hands and speaking with tears of anger in her eyes, 'to make me the laughing-stock of the Court? It was bad enough when I thought you the proper agent of those to whom I have a right to look for aid! It was bad enough when I thought myself forced, through their inconsiderate choice, to decide between an odious imprisonment and the ridicule to which your intervention must expose me! But that you should have dared, of your own notion, to follow me, you, the butt of the Court----'

'Mademoiselle!' I cried.

'A needy, out-at-elbows adventurer!' she persisted, triumphing in her cruelty. 'It exceeds all bearing! It is not to be suffered! It----'

'Nay, mademoiselle; you shall hear me!' I cried, with a sternness which at last stopped her. 'Granted I am poor, I am still a gentleman; yes, mademoiselle,' I continued, firmly, 'a gentleman, and the last of a family which has spoken with yours on equal terms. And I claim to be heard. I swear that when I came here to-night I believed you to be a perfect stranger! I was unaware that I had ever seen you, unaware that I had ever met you before.'

'Then why did you come?' she said viciously.

'I was engaged to come by those whom you have mentioned, and there, and there only am I in fault. They entrusted to me a token which I have lost. For that I crave your pardon.'

'You have need to,' she answered bitterly, yet with a changed countenance, or I was mistaken, 'if your story be true, sir.'

'Ay, that you have!' the woman beside her echoed. 'Hoity toity, indeed! Here is a fuss about nothing. You call yourself a gentleman, and wear such a doublet as----'

'Peace, Fanchette!' mademoiselle said imperiously. And then for a moment she stood silent, eyeing me intently, her lips trembling with excitement and two red spots burning in her cheeks. It was clear from her dress and other things that she had made up her mind to fly had the token been forthcoming; and seeing this, and knowing how unwilling a young girl is to forego her own way, I still had some hopes that she might not persevere in her distrust and refusal. And so it turned out.

Her manner had changed to one of quiet scorn when she next spoke. 'You defend yourself skilfully, sir,' she said, drumming with her fingers on the table and eyeing me steadfastly. 'But can you give me any reason for the person you name making choice of such a messenger?'

'Yes,' I answered, boldly. 'That he may not be suspected of conniving at your escape.'

'Oh!' she cried, with a spark of her former passion. 'Then it is to be put about that Mademoiselle de la Vire had fled from Chize with M. de Marsac, is it? I thought that!'

'Through the assistance of M. de Marsac,' I retorted, correcting her coldly. 'It is for you, mademoiselle,' I continued, 'to weigh that disadvantage against the unpleasantness of remaining here. It only remains for me to ask you to decide quickly. Time presses, and I have stayed here too long already.'

The words had barely passed my lips when they received unwelcome confirmation in the shape of a distant sound--the noisy closing of a door, which, clanging through the house at such an hour--I judged it to be after three o'clock--could scarcely mean anything but mischief. This noise was followed immediately, even while we stood listening with raised fingers, by other sounds--a muffled cry, and the tramp of heavy footsteps in a distant passage. Mademoiselle looked at me, and I at her woman. 'The door!' I muttered. 'Is it locked?'

'And bolted!' Fanchette answered; 'and a great chest set against it. Let them ramp; they will do no harm for a bit.'

'Then you have still time, mademoiselle,' I whispered, retreating a step and laying my hand on the curtain before the window. Perhaps I affected greater coolness than I felt. 'It is not too late. If you choose to remain, well and good. I cannot help it. If, on the other hand, you decide to trust yourself to me, I swear, on the honour of a gentleman, to be worthy of the trust--to serve you truly and protect you to the last! I can say no more.'

She trembled, looking from me to the door, on which some one had just begun to knock loudly. That seemed to decide her. Her lips apart, her eyes full of excitement, she turned hastily to Fanchette.

'Ay, go if you like,' the woman answered doggedly, reading the meaning of her look. 'There cannot be a greater villain than the one we know of. But once started, heaven help us, for if he overtakes us we'll pay dearly for it!'

The girl did not speak herself, but it was enough. The noise at the door increased each second, and began to be mingled with angry appeals to Fanchette to open, and with threats in case she delayed. I cut the matter short by snatching up one of the saddle-bags--the other we left behind--and flung back the curtain which covered the window. At the same time the woman dashed out the light--a timely precaution--and throwing open the casement I stepped on to the balcony, the others following me closely.

The moon had risen high, and flooding with light the small open space about the house enabled me to see clearly all round the foot of the ladder. To my surprise Fresnoy was not at his post, nor was he to be seen anywhere; but as, at the moment I observed this, an outcry away to my left, at the rear of the chateau, came to my ears, and announced that the danger was no longer confined to the interior of the house, I concluded that he had gone that way to intercept the attack. Without more, therefore, I began to descend as quickly as I could, my sword under one arm and the bag under the other.

I was half-way down, and mademoiselle was already stepping on to the ladder to follow, when I heard footsteps below, and saw him run up, his sword in his hand.

'Quick, Fresnoy!' I cried. 'To the horses and unfasten them! Quick!'

I slid down the rest of the way, thinking he had gone to do my bidding. But my feet were scarcely on the ground when a tremendous blow in the side sent me staggering three paces from the ladder. The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that but for the sight of Fresnoy's scowling face, wild with rage, at my shoulder, and the sound of his fierce breathing as he strove to release his sword, which had passed through my saddle-bag, I might never have known who struck the blow, or how narrow had been my escape.

Fortunately the knowledge did come to me in time, and before he freed his blade; and it nerved my hand. To draw my blade at such close quarters was impossible, but, dropping the bag which had saved my life, I dashed my hilt twice in his face with such violence that he fell backwards and lay on the turf, a dark stain growing and spreading on his upturned face.

It was scarcely done before the women reached the foot of the ladder and stood beside me. 'Quick!' I cried to them, 'or they will be upon us.' Seizing mademoiselle's hand, just as half-a-dozen men came running round the corner of the house, I jumped with her down the haha, and, urging her to her utmost speed, dashed across the open ground which lay between us and the belt of trees. Once in the shelter of the latter, where our movements were hidden from view, I had still to free the horses and mount mademoiselle and her woman, and this in haste. But my companions' admirable coolness and presence of mind, and the objection which our pursuers, who did not know our numbers, felt to leaving the open ground, enabled us to do all with comparative ease. I sprang on the Cid (it has always been my habit to teach my horse to stand for me, nor do I know any accomplishment more serviceable at a pinch), and giving Fresnoy's grey a cut over the flanks which despatched it ahead, led the way down the ride by which I had gained the chateau in the afternoon. I knew it to be level and clear of trees, and the fact that we chose it might throw our pursuers off the track for a time, by leading them to think we had taken the south road instead of that through the village.

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