Then I grew seriously alarmed; and reflecting on the many important secrets which the memorial contained, whereof a disclosure must spoil plans so long and sedulously prepared, I found myself brought on a sudden face to face with disaster. I could not imagine how the King, who had again and again urged on me the utmost precaution, would take such a catastrophe; nor how I should make it known to him. For a moment, therefore, while I listened to the tale, I felt the hair rise on my head and a shiver descend my back; nor was it without an uncommon effort that I retained my coolness and composure.

Plainly no steps in such a position could be too stringent. I sent Maignan with an order to close all the doors and let no one pass out. Then I made sure that none of the servants had entered the room, between the time of my rising and return; and this narrowed the tale of those who could have taken the packet to eleven, that being the number of persons who had sat down with me. But having followed the matter so far, I came face to face with this difficulty: that all the eleven were, with one exception, in my service and in various ways pledged to my interests, so that I could not conceive even the possibility of a betrayal by them in a matter so important.

I confess, at this, the perspiration rose upon my brow; for the paper was gone. Still, there remained one stranger; and though it seemed scarcely less difficult to suspect him, since he could have no knowledge of the importance of the document, and could not have anticipated that I should leave it in his power, I found in that the only likely solution. He was one of the Vilains of Pareil by Monceaux, his father living on the edge of the park, little more than a thousand yards from the chateau; and I knew no harm of him. Still, I knew little; and for that reason was forward to believe that there, rather than in my own household, lay the key to the enigma.

My suspicions were not lessened when I discovered that he alone of the party at table had left the house before the doors were closed; and for a moment I was inclined to have him followed and seized. But I could scarcely take a step so decisive without provoking inquiry; and I dared not at this stage let the King know of my negligence. I found myself, therefore, brought up short, in a state of exasperation and doubt difficult to describe; and the most minute search within the house and the closest examination of all concerned failing to provide the slightest clue, I had no alternative but to pass the night in that condition.

On the morrow a third search seeming still the only resource, and proving as futile as the others, I ordered La Trape and two or three in whom I placed the greatest confidence to watch their fellows, and report anything in their bearing or manner that seemed to be out of the ordinary course; while I myself went to wait; on the King, and parry his demand for the memorial as well as I could. This it was necessary to do without provoking curiosity; and as the lapse of each minute made the pursuit of the paper less hopeful and its recovery a thing to pray for rather than expect, it will be believed that I soon found the aspect of civility which I was obliged to wear so great a trial of my patience, that I made an excuse and retired early to my lodging.

Here my wife, who shared my anxiety, met me with a face full of meaning. I cried out to know if they had found the paper.

"No," she answered; "but if you will come into your closet I will tell you what I have learned."

I went in with her, and she told me briefly that the manner of Mademoiselle de Mars, one of her maids, had struck her as suspicious. The girl had begun to cry while reading to her; and when questioned had been able to give no explanation of her trouble.

"She is Vilain's cousin?" I said.

"Yes, monsieur."

"Bring her to me," I said. "Bring her to me without the delay of an instant."

My wife hastened to comply; and whatever had been the girl's state earlier, before the fright of this hasty summons had upset her, her agitation when thus confronted with me gave me, before a word was spoken, the highest hopes that I had here the key to the mystery. I judged that it might be necessary to frighten her still more, and I started by taking a harsh tone with her; but before I had said many words she obviated the necessity of this by falling at my wife's feet and protesting that she would tell all.

"Then speak quickly, wench!" I said. "You know where the paper is."

"I know who has it!" she answered, in a voice choked with sobs.

"Who?"

"My cousin, M. de Vilain."

"Ha! and has taken it to his house?"

But she seemed for a moment unable to answer this; her distress being such that my wife had to fetch a vial of pungent salts to restore her before she could say more. At length she found voice to tell us that M. de Vilain had taken the paper, and was this evening to hand it to an agent of the Spanish ambassador.

"But, girl," I said sternly, "how do you know this?"

Then she confessed that the cousin was also the lover, and had before employed her to disclose what went on in my household, and anything of value that could be discovered there. Doubtless the girl, for whom my wife, in spite of her occasional fits of reserve and temper, entertained no little liking, enjoyed many opportunities of prying; and would have continued still to serve him had not this last piece of villainy, with the stir which it caused in the house and the rigorous punishment to be expected in the event of discovery, proved too much for her nerves. Hence this burst of confession; which once allowed to flow, ran on almost against her will. Nor did I let her pause to consider the full meaning of what she was saying until I had learned that Vilain was to meet the ambassador's agent an hour after sunset at the east end of a clump of trees which stood in the park; and being situate between his, Vilain's, residence and the chateau, formed a convenient place for such a transaction.

"He will have it about him?" I said.

She sobbed a moment, but presently confessed. "Yes; or it will be in the hollow of the most easterly tree. He was to leave it there, if the agent could not keep the appointment."

"Good!" I said; and then, having assured myself by one or two questions of that, of which her state of distress and agitation left me in little doubt—namely, that she was telling the truth—I committed her to my wife's care; bidding the Duchess lock her up in a safe place upstairs, and treat her to bread and water until I had taken the steps necessary to prove the fact, and secure the paper.

After this—but I should be tedious were I to describe the alternations of hope and fear in which I passed the period of suspense. Suffice it that I informed no one, not even Maignan, of what I had discovered, but allowed those in the secret of the loss still to pursue their efforts; while I, by again attending the Court, endeavoured at once to mitigate the King's impatience and persuade the world that all was well. A little before the appointed time, however I made a pretext to rise from supper, and quietly calling out Boisrueil, bade him bring four of the men, armed, and Maignan and La Trape. With this small body I made my way out by a private door, and crossed the park to the place Mademoiselle had, indicated.

Happily, night had already begun to close in, and the rendezvous was at the farther side of the clump of trees. Favoured by these circumstances, we were able to pass round the thicket—some on one side and some on the other—-without noise or disturbance; and fortunate enough, having arrived at the place, to discover a man walking uneasily up and down on the very spot where we expected to find him. The evening was so far advanced that it was not possible to be sure that the man was Vilain; but as all depended on seizing him before he had any communication with the Spanish agent, I gave the signal, and two of my men, springing on him from either side, in a moment bore him to the ground and secured him.

He proved to be Vilain, so that, when he was brought face to face with me, I was much less surprised than he affected to be. He played the part of an ignorant so well, indeed, that, for a moment, I was staggered by his show of astonishment, and by the earnestness with which he denounced the outrage; nor could Maignan find anything on him. But, a moment later, remembering the girl's words, I strode to the nearest tree, and, groping about it, in a twinkling unearthed the paper from a little hollow in the trunk that seemed to have been made to receive it. I need not say with what relief I found the seals unbroken; nor with what indignation I turned on the villain thus convicted of an act of treachery towards the King only less black than the sin against hospitality of which he had been guilty in my house. But the discovery I had made seemed enough of itself to overwhelm him; for, after standing apparently stunned while I spoke, he jerked himself suddenly out of his captors' hands, and made a desperate attempt to escape. Finding this hopeless, and being seized again before he had gone four paces, he shouted, at the top of his voice: "Back! back! Go back!"

We looked about, somewhat startled, and Boisrueil, with presence of mind, ran into the darkness to see if he could detect the person addressed; but though he thought that he saw the skirt of a flying cloak disappear in the gloom, he was not sure; and I, having no mind to be mixed up with the ambassador, called him back. I asked Vilain to whom he had called, but the young man, turning sullen, would answer nothing except that he knew naught of the paper. I thought it best, therefore, to conduct him at once to my lodgings, whither it will be believed that I returned with a lighter heart than I had gone out. It was, indeed, a providential escape.

How to punish the traitor was another matter, for I could scarcely do so adequately without betraying my negligence. I determined to sleep on this, however, and, for the night, directed him to be locked into a chamber in the south-west turret, with a Swiss to guard the door; my intention being to interrogate him farther on the morrow. However, Henry sent for me so early that I was forced to postpone my examination; and, being detained by him until evening, I thought it best to tell him, before I left, what had happened.

He heard the story with a look of incredulity, which, little by little, gave way to a broad smile. "Well," he said, "Grand Master, never chide me again! I have heard that Homer sometimes nods; but if I were to tell this to Sillery or Villeroy, they would not believe me."

"They would believe anything that your Majesty told them," I said. "But you will not tell them this?"

"No," he said kindly, "I will not; and there is my hand on it. For the matter of that, if it had happened to them, they would not have told me."

"And perhaps been the wiser for that," I said.

"Don't believe it," he answered. "But now, what of this young Vilain? You have him safe?"

"Yes, sire."

"The girl is one degree worse; she betrays both sides to save her skin."

"Still, I promised—"

"Oh, she must go," Henry said. "I quite understand. But for him—we had better have no scandal. Keep him until to-morrow, and I will see his father, and have him sent out of the country."

"And he will go scot free," I said, bluntly, "when a rope and the nearest tree—"

"Yes, my friend," Henry answered with a dry smile; "but that should have been done last night. As it is, he is your guest and we must give an account of him. But first drain him dry. Frighten him, as you please, and get all out of him; then I wish them joy of him. Faugh! and he a young man! I would not be his father for two such crowns as mine!"

As I returned to my lodgings I thought over these words; and I fell to wondering by what stages Vilain had sunk so low. Occasionally admitted to my table, he had always borne himself with a modesty and discretion that had not failed to prepossess me; indeed, the longer I considered the King's saying, the greater was the surprise I felt at this DENOUEMENT; which left me in doubt whether my dullness exceeded my negligence or the young man's parts surpassed his wickedness.

A few questions, I thought, might resolve this; but having been detained by the King until supper-time, I postponed the interview until I rose. Then bidding them bring in the prisoner, I assumed my harshest aspect and prepared to blast him by discovering all his vileness to his face.

But when I had waited a little, only Maignan came in, with an air of consternation that brought me to my feet. "Why, man, what is it?" I cried.

"The prisoner," he faltered. "If your excellency pleases—"

"I do not please!" I said sternly, believing that I knew what had happened. "Is he dead?"

"No, your excellency; but, he has escaped."

"Escaped? From that room?"

Maignan nodded.

"Then, PAR DIEU!" I replied, "the man who was on guard shall suffer in his place! Escaped? How could he escape except by treachery? Where was the guard?"

"He was there, excellency. And he says that no one passed him."

"Yet the man is gone?"

"The room is empty."

"But the window—the window, fool, is fifty feet from the ground!" I said. "And not so much footing outside as would hold a crow!"

Maignan shrugged his shoulders, and in a rage I bade him follow me, and went myself to view the place; to which a number of my people had already flocked with lights, so that I found some difficulty in mounting the staircase. A very brief inspection, however, sufficed to confirm my first impression that Vilain could have escaped by the door only; for the window, though it lacked bars and boasted a tiny balcony, hung over fifty feet of sheer depth, so that evasion that way seemed in the absence of ladder or rope purely impossible. This being clear, I ordered the Swiss to be seized; and as he could give no explanation of the escape, and still persisted that he was as much in the dark as anyone, I declared that I would make an example of him, and hang him unless the prisoner was recaptured within three days.

I did not really propose to do this, but in my irritation I spoke so roundly that my people believed me; even Boisrueil, who presently came to intercede for the culprit, who, it seemed, was a favourite. "As for Vilain," he continued; "you can catch him whenever you please."

"Then catch him before the end of three days," I answered obstinately, "and the man lives."

The truth was that Vilain's escape placed me in a position of some discomfort; for though, on the one hand, I had no particular desire to get him again into my hands, seeing that the King could effect as much by a word to his father as I had proposed to do while I held him safe; on the other hand, the evasion placed me very peculiarly in regard to the King himself, who was inclined to think me ill or suddenly grown careless. Some of the facts, too, were leaking out, and provoking smiles among the more knowing, and a hint here and there; the result of all being that, unable to pursue the matter farther in Vilain's case, I hardened my heart and persisted that the Swiss should pay the penalty.

This obstinacy on my part had an unforeseen issue. On the evening of the second day, a little before supper-time, my wife came to me, and announced that a young lady had waited on her with a tale so remarkable that she craved leave to bring her to me that I might hear it.

"What is it?" I said impatiently.

"It is about M. Vilain," my wife answered, her face still wearing all the marks of lively astonishment.

"Ha!" I exclaimed. "I will see her then. But it is not that baggage who—"

"No," my wife answered. "It is another."

"One of your maids?"

"No, a stranger."

"Well, bring her," I said shortly.

She went, and quickly returned with a young lady, whose face and modest bearing were known to me, though I could not, at the moment, recall her name. This was the less remarkable as I am not prone to look much in maids' faces, leaving that to younger men; and Mademoiselle de Figeac's, though beautiful, was disfigured on this occasion by the marked distress under which she was labouring. Accustomed as I was to the visits of persons of all classes and characters who came to me daily with petitions, I should have been disposed to cut her short, but for my wife's intimation that her errand had to do with the matter which annoyed me. This, as well as a trifle of curiosity—from which none are quite free—inclined me to be patient; and I asked her what she would have with me.

"Justice, M. le Duc," she answered simply. "I have heard that you are seeking M. de Vilain, and that one of your people is lying under sentence for complicity in his escape."

"That is true, mademoiselle," I said. "If you can tell me—"

"I can tell you how he escaped, and by whose aid," she answered.

It is my custom to betray no astonishment, even when I am astonished. "Do so," I said.

"He escaped through the window," she answered firmly, "by my brother's aid."

"Your brother's?" I exclaimed, amazed at her audacity. "I do not remember him."

"He is only thirteen years old."

I could hide my astonishment no longer. "You must be mad, girl!" I said, "mad! You do not know what you are saying! The window of the room in which Vilain was confined is fifty feet from the ground, and you say that your brother, a boy of thirteen, contrived his escape?"

"Yes, M. de Sully," she answered. "And the man who is about to suffer is innocent."

"How was it done, then?" I asked, not knowing what to think of her persistence.

"My brother was flying a kite that day," she answered. "He had been doing so for a week or more, and everyone was accustomed to seeing him here. After sunset, the wind being favourable, he came under M. de Vilain's window, and, when it was nearly dark, and the servants and household were at supper, he guided the kite against the balcony outside the window."

"But a man cannot descend by a kite-string!"

"My brother had a knotted rope, which M. de Vilain drew up," she answered simply; "and afterwards, when he had descended, disengaged."

I looked at her in profound amazement.

"Your brother acted on instructions?" I said at last.

"On mine," she answered.

"You avow that?"

"I am here to do so," she replied, her face white and red by turns, but her eyes continuing to meet mine.

"This is a very serious matter," I said. "Are you aware, mademoiselle, why M. Vilain was arrested, and of what he is accused?"

"Perfectly," she answered; "and that he is innocent. More!" she continued, clasping her hands, and looking at me bravely, "I am willing both to tell you where he is, and to bring him, if you please, into your presence."

I stared at her. "You will bring him here?" I said.

"Within five minutes," she answered, "if you will first hear me."

"What are you to him?" I said.

She blushed vividly. "I shall be his wife or no one's," she said; and she looked a moment at my wife.

"Well, say what you have to say!" I cried roughly.

"This paper, which it is alleged that he stole—it was not found on him; but in the hollow of a tree."

"Within three paces of him! And what was he doing there?"

"He came to meet me," she answered, her voice trembling slightly. "He could have told you so, but he would not shame me."

"This is true?" I said, eyeing her closely.

"I swear it!" she answered, clasping her hands. And then, with a sudden flash of rage, "Will the other woman swear to her tale?" she cried.

"Ha!" I said, "what other woman?"

"The woman who sent you to that place," she answered. "He would not tell me her name, or I would go to her now and wring the truth from her. But he confessed to me that he had let a woman into the secret of our meeting; and this is her work."

I stood a moment pondering, with my eyes on the girl's excited face, and my thoughts, following this new clue through the maze of recent events; wherein I could not fail to see that it led to a very different conclusion from that at which I had arrived. If Vilain had been foolish enough to wind up his love-passages with Mademoiselle de Mars by confiding to her his passion for the Figeac, and even the place and time at which the latter was so imprudent as to meet him, I could fancy the deserted mistress laying this plot; and first placing the packet where we found it, and then punishing her lover by laying the theft at his door. True, he might be guilty; and it might be only confession and betrayal on which jealousy had thrust her. But the longer I considered the whole of the circumstances, as well as the young man's character, and the lengths to which I knew a woman's passion would carry her, the more probable seemed the explanation I had just received.

Nevertheless, I did not at once express my opinion; but veiling the chagrin I naturally felt at the simple part I had been led to play—in the event I now thought probable—I sharply ordered Mademoiselle de Figeac to retire into the next room; and then I requested my wife to fetch her maid.

Mademoiselle de Mars had been three days in solitary confinement, and might be taken to have repented of her rash accusation were it baseless. I counted somewhat on this; and more on the effect of so sudden a summons to my presence. But at first sight it seemed that I did so without cause. Instead of the agitation which she had displayed when brought before me to confess, she now showed herself quiet and even sullen; nor did the gleam of passion, which I thought that I discerned smouldering in her dark eyes, seem to promise either weakness or repentance. However, I had too often observed the power of the unknown over a guilty conscience to despair of eliciting the truth.

"I want to ask you two or three questions," I said civilly. "First, was M. de Vilain with you when you placed the paper in the hollow of the tree? Or were you alone?"

I saw her eyelids quiver as with sudden fear, and her voice shook as she stammered, "When I placed the paper?"

"Yes," I said, "when you placed the paper. I have reason to know that you did it. I wish to learn whether he was present, or you did it merely under his orders?"

She looked at me, her face a shade paler, and I do not doubt that her mind was on the rack to divine how much I knew, and how far she might deny and how far confess. My tone seemed to encourage frankness, however, and in a moment she said, "I placed it under his directions."

"Yes," I said drily, my last doubt resolved by the admission; "but that being so, why did Vilain go to the spot?"

She grew still a shade paler, but in a moment she answered, "To meet the agent."

"Then why did you place the paper in the tree?"

She saw the difficulty in which she had placed herself, and for an instant she stared at me with the look of a wild animal caught in a trap. Then, "In case the agent was late," she muttered.

"But since Vilain had to go to the spot, why did he not deposit the paper in the tree himself? Why did he send you to the place beforehand? Why did—" and then I broke off and cried harshly, "Shall I tell you why? Shall I tell you why, you false jade?"

She cowered away from me at the words, and stood terror-stricken, gazing at me like one fascinated. But she did not answer.

"Because," I cried, "your story is a tissue of lies! Because it was you, and you only, who stole this paper! Because—Down on your knees! down on your knees!" I thundered, "and confess! Confess, or I will have you whipped at the cart's tail, like the false witness you are!"

She threw herself down shrieking, and caught my wife by the skirts, and in a breath had said all I wanted; and more than enough to show me that I had suspected Vilain without cause, and both played the simpleton myself and harried my household to distraction.

So far good. I could arrange matters with Vilain, and probably avoid publicity. But what was now to be done with her?

In the case of a man I should have thought no punishment too severe, and the utmost rigour of the law too tender for such perfidy; but as she was a woman, and young, and under my wife's protection, I hesitated. Finally, the Duchess interceding, I leaned to the side of that mercy which the girl had not shown to her lover; and thought her sufficiently punished, at the moment by the presence of Mademoiselle de Figeac whom I called into the room to witness her humiliation, and in the future by dismissal from my household. As this imported banishment to her father's country-house, where her mother, a shrewd old Bearnaise, saved pence and counted lentils into the soup, and saw company once a quarter, I had perhaps reason to be content with her chastisement.

For the rest I sent for M. de Vilain, and by finding him employment in the finances, and interceding for him with the old Vicomte de Figeac, confirmed him in the attachment he had begun to feel for me before this unlucky event; nor do I doubt that I should have been able in time to advance him to a post worthy of the talents I discerned in him. But, alas, the deplorable crime, which so soon deprived me at one blow of my master and of power, put an end to this, among other and greater schemes.



VII.

THE GOVERNOR OF GUERET.

Without attaching to dreams greater importance than a prudent man will always be willing to assign to the unknown and unintelligible, I have been in the habit of reflecting on them; and have observed with some curiosity that in these later years of my life, during which France has enjoyed peace and comparative prosperity, my dreams have most often reproduced the stormy rides and bivouacs of my youth, with all the rough and bloody accompaniments which our day knows only by repute. Considering these visions, and comparing my sleeping apathy with my daylight reflections, I have been led to wonder at the power of habit; which alone makes it possible for a man who has seen a dozen stricken fields, and viewed, scarcely with emotion, the slaughter of a hundred prisoners, to turn pale at the sight of a coach accident, and walk a mile rather than see a rogue hang.

I am impelled to this train of thought by an adventure that befell me in the summer of this year 1605; and which, as it seemed to me in the happening to be rather an evil dream of old times than a waking episode of these, may afford the reader some diversion, besides relieving the necessary tedium of the thousand particulars of finance that render the five farms a study of the utmost intricacy.

My appointment to represent the King at the Assembly of Chatelherault had carried me in the month of July into Poitou. Being there, and desirous of learning for myself whether the arrest of Auvergne had pacified his country to the extent described by the King's agents, I determined to take advantage of a vacation of the assembly and venture as far in that direction as Gueret; though Henry, fearing lest the malcontents should make an attempt on my person in revenge for the death of Biron, had strictly charged me not to approach within twenty leagues of the Limousin.

I had with me for escort at Chatelherault a hundred horse; but, these seeming to be either too many or too few for the purpose, I took with me only ten picked men with Colet their captain, five servants heavily armed, and of my gentlemen Boisrueil and La Font. Parabere, to whom I opened my mind, consented to be my companion. I gave out that I was going to spend three days at Preuilly, to examine an estate there which I thought of buying, that I might have a residence in my government; and, having amused the curious with this statement, I got away at daybreak, and by an hour before noon was at Touron, where I stayed for dinner. That night we lay at a village, and the next day dined at St. Marcel. The second afternoon we reached Crozant.

Here I began to observe those signs of neglect and disorder which, at the close of the war, had been common in all parts of France, but in the more favoured districts had been erased by a decade of peace. Briars and thorns choked the roads, which ran through morasses, between fields which the husbandman had resigned to tares and undergrowth. Ruined hamlets were common, and everywhere wolves and foxes and all kinds of game abounded. But that which roused my ire to the hottest was the state of the bridges, which in this country, where the fords are in winter impassable, had been allowed to fall into utter decay. On all sides I found the peasants oppressed, disheartened, and primed with tales of the King's severity, which those who had just cause to dread him had instilled into them. Bands of robbers committed daily excesses, and, in a word, no one thing was wanting to give the lie to the rose-coloured reports with which Bareilles, the Governor of Gueret, had amused the Council.

I confess that, at sight and thought of these things—of this country so devoured, the King's authority so contemned, all evils laid at his door, all his profits diverted—my anger burned within me, and I said more to Parabere than was perhaps prudent, telling him, in particular, what I designed against Bareilles, of whose double-dealing I needed no further proof; by what means I proposed to lull his suspicions for the moment, since we must lie at Gueret, and how I would afterwards, on the first occasion, have him seized and punished.

I forgot, while I avowed these things, that one weakness of Parabere's character which rendered him unable to believe evil of anyone. Even of Bareilles, though the two were the merest acquaintances, he could only think indulgently, because, forsooth, he too was a Protestant. He began to defend him therefore, and, seeing how the ground lay, after a time I let the matter drop.

Still I did not think that he had been serious in his plea, and that which happened on the following morning took me completely by surprise. We had left Crozant an hour, and I was considering whether, the road being bad, we should even now reach Gueret before night, when Parabere, who had made some excuse to ride forward, returned, to me with signs of embarrassment in his manner.

"My friend," he said, "here is a message from Bareilles."

"How?" I exclaimed. "A message? For whom?"

"For you," he said; "the man is here."

"But how did Bareilles know that I was coming?" I asked.

Parabere's confusion furnished me with the answer before he spoke. "Do not be angry, my friend," he said. "I wanted to do Bareilles a good turn. I saw that you were enraged with him, and I thought that I could not help him better than by suggesting to him to come and meet you in a proper spirit, and make the explanations which I am sure that he has it in his power to make. Yesterday morning, therefore, I sent to him."

"And he is here?" I said drily.

Parabere admitted with a blush that he was not. His messenger had found Bareilles on the point of starting against a band of plunderers who had ravaged the country for a twelvemonth. He had sent me the most; civil messages therefore—but he had not come. "However, he will be at Gueret to-morrow," Parabere added cheerfully.

"Will he?" I said.

"I will answer for it," he answered. "In the meantime, he has done what he can for our comfort."

"How?" I said,

"He bids us not to attempt the last three leagues to Gueret to-night; the road is too bad. But to stay at Saury, where there is a good inn, and to-morrow morning he will meet us there."

"If the brigands have not proved too much for him," I said.

"Yes," Parabere answered, with a simplicity almost supernatural. "To be sure."

After this, it was no use to say anything to him, though his officiousness would have justified the keenest reproaches. I swallowed my resentment, therefore, and we went on amicably enough, though the valley of the Creuse, in its upper and wilder part, through which our road now wound, offered no objects of a kind to soften my anger against the governor. I saw enough of ruins, of blocked defiles, and overgrown roads; but of returning prosperity and growing crops, and the King's peace, I saw no sign—not so much as one dead robber.

About noon we alighted to eat a little at a wretched tavern by one of the innumerable fords. A solitary traveller who was here before us, and for a time kept aloof, wearing a grand and mysterious manner with a shabby coat, presently moved; edging himself up to me where I sat a little apart, eating with Parabere and my gentlemen.

"Sir," he said, on a sudden and without preface, "I see that you are the leader of this party."

As I was more plainly dressed than Parabere, and had been giving no orders, I wondered how he knew; but I answered, without any remark, "Well, sir; and what of that?"

"You are in great danger," he replied.

"I?" I said.

"Yes, sir; you!" he answered.

"You know me?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Not I," he said, "but those who speak by me. Enough that you are in danger."

"From what?" I asked sceptically; while my companions stared, and the troopers and servants, who were just within hearing, listened open-mouthed.

"A one-eyed woman and a one-eyed house," he answered darkly. Then, before I could frame a question, he turned from me as abruptly as he had come, and, mounting a sorry mare that stood near, stumbled away through the ford.

It required little wit to see that the man was an astrologer, and one whose predictions, if they had not profited his clients more than himself, had been ominous indeed. I was inclined, therefore, to make sport of him, knowing that the pretenders to that art are to the true men as ten to one. But his words, and particularly the fact that he had asked for nothing, had impressed my followers differently; so that they talked of nothing else while we ate, and could still be heard discussing him in the saddle. The wildness of the road and the gloomy aspect of the valley had doubtless some effect on their minds; which a thunderstorm that shortly afterwards overtook us and drenched us to the skin did not tend to lighten. I was glad to see the roofs of Saury before us; though, on a nearer approach, we found all the houses except the inn ruined and tenantless; and even, that scorched and scarred, with the great gate that had once closed its courtyard prostrate in the road before it.

However, in view of the country we had come through, and the general desolation, we were thankful to find things no worse. The village stood at the entrance to a gorge, with the Creuse—here a fast-rushing stream—running at the back of the inn. The latter was of good size, stone-built and tiled, and, at first, seemed to be empty; but the servants presently unearthed a man and then a boy. Fires were lit, and the horses stabled; and a second room with a chimney being found, Parabere and I, with Colet and my gentlemen, took possession of it, leaving the kitchen to my following.

I had had my boots removed, and was drying my clothes and expecting supper, when Boisrueil, who was beside me, uttered an exclamation of amazement.

"What is it?" I said.

He did not answer, and I followed his eyes. A woman had just entered the room with a bundle of sticks. She had one eye!

I confess that, for an instant, this staggered me; but a moment's thought reminded me that the astrologer had come from this inn to us, and I smiled at the credulity which would have built on a coincidence that was no coincidence. When the woman had retired again, therefore, I rallied Boisrueil on his timidity; but, though he admitted the correctness of my reasoning, I saw that he was not entirely convinced. He started whenever a shutter flapped, or the draughts, which searched the grim old building through and through, threatened to extinguish our lights. He hung cloaks over the windows to obviate the latter inconvenience he said—and was continually going out and coming back with gloomy looks. Parabere joined me in rallying him, which we did without mercy; but when I had occasion, after a while, to pass through the outer room I found that he was not alone in his fears. The troopers sat moodily listening, or muttered together; while the cup passed round in silence. When I bade a man go on an errand to the stable, four went; and when I dropped a word to the woman who was attending to her pot, a dozen heads were stretched out to catch the answer.

Such a feeling—to which, in this instance, the murmur of the stream and the steady downpour of rain doubtless added something—is so contagious that I was not surprised to find Colet and La Font sinking under it. Only Parabere, in fact, rose quite superior to the notion, laughed at their fears, and drank to their better spirits; and, making the best of the situation, as became an old soldier, presently engaged me in tales of the war—fought again the siege of Laon, and buried men whose bodies bad lain for ten years under the oaks at Fontaine Francoise.

Talk of this kind, which we still maintained after we had despatched our supper, was sufficiently engrossing to erase Boisrueil's fancies entirely from my mind. They were recalled by his sudden entrance, with Colet at his elbow, the faces of both full of importance. I saw that they had something to say, and asked what it was.

"We have been examining the back gate, M. le Marquis," Colet said.

"Well, man?"

"It is barricaded, and cannot be opened," he answered.

"Well," I said again, "there is nothing wonderful in that. Anyone can see that there has been rough work here. The front gate was stormed, I suppose, and the back one left standing."

"But if is so barricaded that it is not possible to open it," he objected. "And the men have an idea—"

"Well?" I said, seeing that he hesitated.

"That this is a one-eyed house."

Parabere laughed loudly. "Of course it is!" he said. "That strolling rogue saw the gate as well as the woman, and made his profit of them."

"Pardon, sir!" Boisrueil answered bluntly, "That is just what he did not do!"

"Well," I said, silencing him by a gesture, "is that all?"

"No," he replied; "I have tasted the men's wine."

"And it is drugged?"

"No," he said. "On the contrary, it is a great deal too good for the price—or the house. And you ordered a litre apiece. Some have had two, and not asked twice for it!"

"Ho, ho!" I said, staring at him. "Are you sure of that?"

"Quite!" he said.

I was genuinely startled at last; but Parabere still made light of it. "What!" he said. "Are we a pack of nervous women, or one poor traveller in a solitary inn, that we see shadows and shake at them?"

"The inn is solitary enough," Boisrueil grumbled.

"But we are twenty swords!" Parabere retorted, opening his eyes wide. "Why, I have ridden all day in an enemy's country with less!"

"And been beaten with more at Craon."

"But, man alive, that was in a battle, and by an army!"

"Well, and there may be a battle and an army here," Boisrueil answered sulkily.

I was inclined to laugh at this as extravagance; but seeing that La Font and Colet sided with Boisrueil, I remembered that the latter was no coward though a great gossip; and I thought better of it. Accordingly, resolving to look into the thing myself, I bade La Font fetch a couple of lanthorns, and, when he had done so, went out with him and Boisrueil as if I had a mind to go round the horses before I retired. Parabere declined to accompany me on the ground that he would not be at the pains of it; and Colet I left in the kitchen to keep an eye on the man and woman.

There was no moon, rain was still falling, and the yard, crowded with steaming, shivering horses, was dreary enough where the lanthorns displayed it; but, accustomed to such a sight, I made, without regarding it, for the gate, which a moment's examination showed to be barricaded, as they had described, with great beams and stones. In this there was nothing beyond the ordinary, one entrance to a house being in troublous times better than two; but Boisrueil, bidding me kneel and look lower, I found, when I did so, that the soil under the beams—which did not touch the ground by some inches—was wet, and I began to understand. When he asked me at what hour rain had begun to fall, I answered two in the afternoon, and drew at once the inference at which he aimed—that the beams had been put there, and the gate barricaded, at some later hour.

"We reached here at six," he said; "it was done some time between two and six, my lord; therefore to-day. To-day," he repeated in a low voice; "and by a dozen men at least, Fewer could not move those beams."

"And the object?"

"To prevent our escape."

"But who are they?" I said, looking at him.

"The woman knows," he answered. "We must ask her, my lord."

I assented; and we went back into the house, where it would not have surprised me if we had found the wretches flown and the nest empty. But Colet had done his work too well. They were both there, and, in a moment, at a signal from Boisrueil, were secured and pinioned. Parabere, hearing the scuffle, came out and would have remonstrated, but I silenced him with a sharp word; and, despatching La Font with a couple of discreet men to keep watch in the court that we might not be surprised, I bade one of the servants throw some fir-cones on the fire. These, blazing up, filled the squalid room in a moment with a glare of light, which revealed alike the livid faces of the two prisoners and the excited looks and dark countenances of my escort.

I bade them put the woman forward first, and addressed her sternly, telling her that I knew all, and that she would do well to confess; inasmuch as if she made a clean breast of the matter, I would grant her her life, and if she did not, she would be the first to die, since I would hang her were a single shot fired against the house.

The promise found her unmoved, but the threat, uttered in a tone which showed that I was in earnest, proved more effectual. With an ugly look, under which my men shrank as if her eye had power to scorch them, the hag said that she would confess, and, with impotent rage, admitted the truth of Boisrueil's surmises. The rearward gate had been barricaded that afternoon by the Great Band, who had had notice of our coming, and intended to attack us at midnight. I asked her how many they mustered.

"A hundred," she answered sullenly.

"Very well," I said. "And, supposing that we do not wait for them, how shall we escape? By the road to Gueret?"

"Fifty lie in ambush on it."

"By the road by which we came?"

"The other fifty lie there."

"Across the river?"

"There is no ford."

"Then in the village? If we seize some other building?"

"The village is watched, and this house," she answered, with a sparkle of joy in her eye.

At that the position began to assume so serious an aspect that I turned to Parabere to take his advice. We numbered twenty in all, and were well armed; but five to one are large odds, and we had little ammunition, while, for all we knew, the house might be fired with ease from the outside. The roads north and south being occupied, and the river enclosing us on the west, there remained only one direction in which escape seemed possible; but, as we knew nothing of the country, and the brigands everything, the desperate idea of plunging into it blindly, at night, and with pursuers at our heels, was dismissed as soon as formed.

Parabere interrupted these calculations by drawing me aside into the room in which we had supped, where, after rallying me on the whimsical notion of the Grand Master of the Ordnance and Governor of the Bastile being besieged in a paltry inn, he confessed that he had been wrong, and that the adventure was likely to prove serious. "Ten to one this is the very band that Bareilles is pursuing," he said.

"Very likely," I answered bluntly; "but the question is how are we to evade them. Are we to fight or fly?"

"Well, for lighting," he replied coolly; "the front gate lies in the road, there are no shutters to half the windows, the door is crazy, and there is a thatched pent-house against one wall."

"And no help-nearer than Gueret."

"Three leagues," he assented. "And from that we are cut off. Fifty men in the gorge might hold it against five hundred. Better man the courtyard here than that, tether the horses in the gateway, and fight it out."

"Perhaps so," I said; and we looked at one another, hearing through the open door the men muttering and whispering in the kitchen, and above their voices the dull murmur of the stream, which seemed of a piece with the bleak night outside, the ruined hamlet, and the danger that lurked round us. Bitterly repenting the hardihood that had led me to expose myself to such risks in breach of the King's commandment, I found it difficult to direct my mind to the immediate question. So many reflections connected with my mission at Chatelherault and other affairs of state would intrude that I seemed to be occupied rather with the results of my death at this juncture, and particularly the injury which it must inflict on the King's service, than with the question how I could escape.

However, Parabere soon recalled me to the point. "It is now ten o'clock," he said in a placid tone; "we have two hours."

"Yes," I answered; then, as if my mind had all the time been running in an under-current to the desired goal, I continued, "And we must make the most of them. We must remove the barricade, in the dark and quietly, from the rear to the front gate. Do you see? Then the moment they sound the attack in front we must slip out at the back, make a dash for the road, and through the gorge to Gueret."

"Good," Parabere assented, with the utmost coolness. "Why not? Let us do it."

We went in, and in a moment the orders were given, and, the men being charged to be silent and to make as little noise as possible over the work, we had every hope of accomplishing it undetected. To go out into the road and raise and replace the shattered gate would have been too bold a step. We contented ourselves, therefore, with removing four great baulks of timber from the one gate to the other, and placing them across the gap in such a manner that, being supported by large stones, they formed a pretty high barrier. To these, at Boisrueil's suggestion, were added three doors which we forced from their hinges in the house, and behind the whole, to cover our retreat the better, we tethered six sumpter horses in two lines.

It remained only to unbar the rear gate and see that it opened easily. This being done, as we had done all the rest, stealthily and in darkness, and by men who dared not speak above a whisper, I gave the word to hang the male prisoner and gag and bind the woman. Colet undertook these duties, and with a grim humour of his own hung the rascally host on the threshold where the brigands must run against him when they entered. Then I directed every man to saddle and bridle his nag and stand by it, and so we waited with what patience we might for the DENOUEMENT.

It seemed very long in coming, yet when it did, what with the restless movements of the horses and the melancholy murmur of the stream, it well-nigh took us by surprise. It was Boisrueil who touched my sleeve and made me aware of a low trampling on the road outside, a sound that had scarcely become clearly audible before it ceased. I judged that the moment was come, and passed the word in a whisper to open the gates. Unfortunately, they creaked, and I feared for a moment that I had been premature; but before they were more than ajar a harsh whistle startled the silence, a flare blazed up on the road, and a voice cried to charge.

On the instant the ground shook under the assailants' rush, but the barricade, which doubtless took the rogues by surprise, brought them to a sudden stop, and gave us time to file out. The heavy rain which was failing served to cover our movements almost as well as the baggage horses which we had posted for the purpose; while we ran the less risk, inasmuch as the flare they had kindled lit up the upper part of the house but left the courtyard in perfect darkness.

Naturally, once outside, we did not linger to see what happened, but, filing in a line and like ghosts up the bank of the stream, were glad to hit on the road a hundred and fifty paces away, where it entered the gorge. Here, where it was as dark as pitch, we whipped our horses into a canter and made a good pace for half a league, then, drawing rein, let our horses trot until the league was out. By that time we were through the gorge, and I gave the word to pull up, that we might listen and learn whether we were pursued. Before the order had quite brought us to a standstill, however, two figures on a sudden rose out of the darkness before us and barred the way. I was riding in the front rank, abreast of Parabere and La Font, and I had just time to lay my hand on a pistol when one of the figures spoke.

"Well, M. le Capitaine, what luck?" he cried, advancing, and drawing rein to turn with us.

I saw his mistake, and, raising my hand to check those behind, muttered in my beard that all had gone well.

"You got the man?"

"Yes," I said, peering at him through the darkness.

"Good!" he answered. "Then now for Bareilles, supper, and a full purse; and afterwards, for me, the quietest corner of France! The King will make a fine outcry, and I do not trust one gov—"

In a flash Parabere had him by the throat, and dragged him in a grip of iron on to the withers of his horse. Still he managed to utter a cry, and the other rascal, taking the alarm, whipped his horse round, and in a second got a start of twenty paces. Colet, a light man and well mounted, was after him in a trice, and we heard them go ding-dong, ding-dong, through the darkness for a mile or more as it seemed to us. Then a sharp scream came faintly down the wind.

"Good!" Parabere said cheerfully. "Let us be jogging." He had tied his prisoner neck and knees over the saddle before him.

"You heard what he said?" I muttered, as we moved on.

"Perfectly," he answered in the same tone.

"And you think?"

"I think, Grand Master," he replied drily, "that the sooner you are out of La Marche and Bareilles' government the longer you are likely to live."

I was quite of that opinion myself, having drawn the same inferences from the words the prisoner had uttered. But for the moment I had no alternative save to go on, and put a bold face on the matter; and accordingly I led the way forward at as fast a pace as the darkness and the jaded state of our horses permitted. Colet presently joined us, and half an hour later a bunch of lights which appeared on the side of a hill in front proclaimed that we were nearing Gueret. From this point half a league across a rushy bottom and through a ford brought us to the gate, which opened before we summoned it. I had taken care to call to the van one of my men who knew the town; and he guided us quickly, no one challenging us, through a number of foul, narrow streets and under dark archways, among which a stranger must have gone astray. We reached at last a good-sized square, on one side of which—though the rest of the town lay buried in darkness—a large building, which I judged to be Bareilles' residence, exposed a dozen lighted windows to the street. Two or three figures lounged half-seen on the wide stone steps which led up to the entrance, and the rattle of dice, with a murmur of voices, came from the windows. Without a moment's hesitation I dismounted at the foot of the steps, and, bidding La Font and Boisrueil attend me, with three of the servants, I directed Colet to withdraw with the rest and the horses to the farther end of the square.

Dreading nothing so much as that I might lose the advantage of surprise, I put aside two of the men on the steps who would have questioned me, and strode boldly across the stone landing at the head of the flight. Here I found two doors facing me, and foresaw the possibility of error; but I was relieved from the burden of choosing by the sudden appearance at one of them of Bareilles himself. The place was lit only by an oil lamp, and, for a reason best known to himself, he did not look directly at me, but stood with his head half-turned as he said, "Well, Martin, is it done?"

I heard the dicers hold their hands to catch the answer, and in the silence a bottle in some unsteady hand clinked against a glass. Through the half-open door behind him it was possible to see a long table, laid and glittering with steel and plate; and all seemed to wait.

Parabere broke the spell. "We are late!" he said in a ringing voice, which startled the governor as if it had been the voice of doom. "But we could not have found you better prepared, it seems. Do you always sup as late as this?"

For a moment the villain could not speak, but leaned against the doorpost, with his cheeks gone white and his jaw fallen, the most pitiable spectacle to be conceived. I affected to see nothing, however, but went by him easily, and into the room, drawing off my gauntlets as entered. The dicers, from their seats beside a table on the hearth, gazed at me, turned to stone. I took up a glass, filled it, and drank it off. "Now I am better!" I said. "But this is not the warmest of welcomes, M. de Bareilles."

He muttered something, looking fearfully from one to another of us; and, his hand shaking, filled a glass and pledged me. The wine gave him courage and impudence: he began to speak; and though his hurried sentences and excited manner must have betrayed him to the least suspicious, we pretended to see nothing, but rather to congratulate ourselves on his late hours and timely preparations. And certainly nothing could have seemed more cheerful in comparison with the squalid inn and miry road from which we came than this smiling feast; if death had not seemed to my eyes to lurk behind it.

"I thought it likely that you would lie at Saury," he said, with a ghastly smile.

"And yet made this preparation for us?" I answered politely, yet letting a little of my real mind be seen. "Well, as a fact, M. Bareilles, save for one thing we should have lain there."

"And that thing?" he asked, his tongue almost failing him as he put the question.

"The fact that you have a villain in your company," I answered.

"What?" he stammered.

"A villain, M. le Capitaine Martin," I continued sternly. "You sent him out this morning against the Great Band; instead, he took it upon him to lay a plot for me, from which I have only narrowly escaped."

"Martin?"

"Yes, M. de Bareilles, Martin!" I answered roundly, fixing him with my eyes; while Parabere went quietly to the door, and stood by it. "If I am not mistaken, I hear him at this moment dismounting below. Let us understand one another therefore, I propose to sup with you, but I shall not sit down until he hangs."

It would be useless for me to attempt to paint the mixture of horror, perplexity, and shame which distorted Bareilles' countenance as I spoke these words. While Parabere's attitude and my demeanour gave him clearly to understand that we suspected the truth, if we did not know it, our coolness and the very nature of my demand imposed upon his fears and led him to believe that we had a regiment at our call. He knew, too, that that which might be done in a ruined hamlet might not be done in the square at Gueret; and his knees trembled under him. He muttered that he did not understand; that we must be mistaken. What evidence had we?

"The best!" I answered grimly. "If you wish to hear it, I will send for it; but witnesses have sometimes loose tongues, Bareilles, and he may not stop at the Capitaine Martin."

He started and glared at me. From me his eyes passed to Parabere; then he shuddered, and looked down at the table. As he leaned against it, I heard the glasses tinkling softly. At last he muttered that the man must have a trial.

I shrugged my shoulders, and would have answered that that was his business; but at the moment a heavy step rang on the stone steps, the door was flung hastily open, and a dark-complexioned man came in with his hat on. The stranger was splashed to the chin, and his face wore an expression of savage annoyance; but this gave place the instant he saw us to one of intense surprise, while the words he had had on his lips died away, and he stood nonplussed. I turned to M. de Bareilles.

"Who is this?" I said harshly.

"One of my lieutenants," he answered in a stifled tone.

"M. le Capitaine Martin?"

"The same," he answered.

"Very well," I replied. "You have heard my terms."

He stood clutching the table, and in the bright light of the candles that burned on it his face was horrible. Still he managed to speak. "M. le Capitaine, call four men," he muttered.

"Monsieur?" the Captain answered.

"Call four men—four of your men," Bareilles repeated with an effort.

The Captain turned and went downstairs in amazement, returning immediately after with four troopers at his heels.

Bareilles' face was ghastly. "Take M. le Capitaine's sword," he said to them.

The Captain's jaw fell, and, stepping back a pace, he looked from one to another. But all were silent; he found every eye upon him, and, doubtful and taken by surprise, he unbuckled his sword and flung it with an oath upon the floor.

"To the garden with him!" Bareilles continued, hoarsely. "Quick! Take him! I will send you your orders."

They laid hands on the man mechanically, and, unnerved by the suddenness of the affair, the silence, and the presence of so many strangers,—ignorant, too, what was doing or what was meant, he went unresisting. They marched him out heavily; the door closed behind them; we stood waiting. The glittering table, the lights, the arrested dicers, all the trivial preparations for a carouse that at another time must have given a cheerful aspect to the room, produced instead the most sombre impression. I waited, but, seeing that Bareilles did not move, I struck the table with my gauntlet. "The order!" I said, sharply; "the order!"

He slunk to a table in a corner where there was ink, and scrawled it. I took it from his hand, and, giving it to Boisrueil, "Take it," I said, "and the three men on the landing, and see the order carried out. When it is over, come and tell me."

He took the order and disappeared, La Font after him. I remained in the room with Parabere, Bareilles, and the dicers. The minutes passed slowly, no one speaking; Bareilles standing with his head sunk on his breast, and a look of utter despair on his countenance. At length Boisrueil and La Font returned. The former nodded.

"Very well," I said. "Then let us sup, gentlemen. Come, M. de Bareilles, your place is at the head of the table. Parabere, sit here. Gentlemen, I have not the honour of knowing you, but here are places."

And we supped; but not all with the same appetite. Bareilles, silent, despairing, a prey to the bitterest remorse, sat low in his chair, and, if I read his face aright, had no thought but of vengeance. But, assured that by forcing him to that which must for ever render him odious—and particularly among his inferiors—I had sapped his authority at the root, I took care only that he should not leave us. I directed Colet to unsaddle and bivouac in the garden, and myself lay all night with Parabere and Bareilles in the room in which we had supped, Boisrueil and La Font taking turns to keep the door.

To have betrayed too much haste to be gone might have proved as dangerous as a long delay; and our horses needed rest. But an hour before noon next day I gave the order and we mounted in the square, in the presence of a mixed mob of soldiers and townsfolk, whom it needed but a spark to kindle. I took care that that spark should be wanting, however; and to that end I compelled Bareilles to mount and ride with us as far as Saury. Here, where I found the inn burned and the woman murdered, I should have done no more than justice had I hung him as well; and I think that he half expected it. But reflecting that he had a score of relations in Poitou who might give trouble, and, besides that, his position called for some degree of consideration, I parted with him gravely, and hastened to put as many leagues between us as possible. That night we slept at Crozant, and the next at St. Gaultier.

It was chiefly in consequence of the observations I made during this journey that Henry, in the following October, marched into the Limousin with a considerable force and received the submission of the governors. The details of that expedition, in the course of which he put to death ten or twelve of the more disorderly, will be found in another place. It remains for me only to add here that Bareilles was not of them. He escaped a fate he richly deserved by flying betimes with Bassignac to Sedan. Of his ultimate fate I know nothing; but a week after my return to the Arsenal, a man called on me who turned out to be the astrologer. I gave him fifty crowns.



VIII.

THE OPEN SHUTTER.

Few are ignorant of that weakness of the vulgar which leads them to admire in the great not so much the qualities which deserve admiration as those which, in the eyes of the better-informed, are defects; so that the amours of Caesar, the clock-making of Charles, and the jests of Coligny are more in the mouths of men than their statesmanship or valour. For one thing commendable, two that are diverting are told; and for one man who in these days recalls the thousand great and wise deeds of the late King a thousand remember his occasional freaks, the duel he would have fought, or his habit of visiting the streets of Paris by night and in disguise. That this last has been much exaggerated, I can myself bear witness; for though Varenne or Coquet, the Master of the Household, were his usual companions on these occasions, he seldom failed to confess to me after the event, and more than once I accompanied him.

If I remember rightly, it was in April or May of this year, 1606, and consequently a few days after his return from Sedan, that he surprised me one night as I sat at supper, and, requesting me to dismiss my servants, let me know that he was in a flighty mood; and that nothing would content him but to play the Caliph in my company. I was not too willing, for I did not fail to recognise the risk to which these expeditions exposed his person; but, in the end, I consented, making only the condition that Maignan should follow us at a distance. This he conceded, and I sent for two plain suits, and we dressed in my closet. The King, delighted with the frolic, was in his wildest mood. He uttered an infinity of jests, and cut a thousand absurd antics; and, rallying me on my gravity, soon came near to making me repent of the easiness which had led me to fall in with his humour.

However, it was too late to retreat, and in a moment we were standing in the street. It would not have surprised me if he had celebrated his freedom by some noisy extravagance there; but he refrained, and contented himself—while Maignan locked the postern behind us—with cocking his hat and lugging forward his sword, and assuming an air of whimsical recklessness, as if an adventure were to be instantly expected.

But the moon had not yet risen, the night was dark, and for some time we met with nothing more diverting than a stumble over a dead dog, a word with a forward wench, or a narrow escape from one of those liquid douches that render the streets perilous for common folk and do not spare the greatest. Naturally, I began to tire, and wished myself with all my heart back at the Arsenal; but Henry, whose spirits a spice of danger never failed to raise, found a hundred things to be merry over, and some of which he made a great tale of afterwards. He would go on; and presently, in the Rue de la Pourpointerie, which we entered as the clocks struck the hour before midnight, his persistence was rewarded.

By that time the moon had risen; but, naturally, few were abroad so late, and such as were to be seen belonged to a class among whom even Henry did not care to seek adventures. Our astonishment was great therefore when, half-way down the street—a street of tall, mean houses neither better nor much worse than others in that quarter—we saw, standing in the moonlight at an open door, a boy about seven years old.

The King saw him first, and, pressing my arm, stood still. On the instant the child, who had probably seen us before we saw him, advanced into the road to us. "Messieurs," he said, standing up boldly before us and looking at us without fear, "my father is ill, and I cannot close the shutter."

The boy's manner, full of self-possession, and his tone, remarkable at his age, took us so completely by surprise—to say nothing of the late hour and the deserted street, which gave these things their full effect—that for a moment neither of us answered. Then the King spoke. "Indeed, M. l'Empereur," he said gravely; "and where is the shutter?"

The boy pointed to an open shutter at the top of the house behind him.

"Ah!" Henry said. "And you wish us to close it?"

"If you please, messieurs."

"We do please," Henry replied, saluting him with mock reverence. "You may consider the shutter closed. Lead on, Monsieur; we follow."

For the first time the boy looked doubtful; but he turned without saying anything, and passing through the doorway, was in an instant lost in the pitchy darkness of the entry. I laid my hand on the King's arm, and tried to induce him not to follow; fearing much that this might be some new thieves' trap, leading nowhither save to the POIRE D'ANGOISSE and the poniard. But the attempt was hopeless from the first; he broke from me and entered, and I followed him.

We groped for the balustrade and found it, and began to ascend, guided by the boy's voice; who kept a little before us, saying continually, "This way, messieurs; this way!" His words had so much the sound of a signal, and the staircase was so dark and ill-smelling, that, expecting every moment to be seized or to have a knife in my back, I found it almost interminable. At last, however, a gleam of light appeared above us, the boy opened a door, and we found ourselves standing on a mean, narrow landing, the walls of which had once been whitewashed. The child signed to us to enter, and we followed him into a bare attic, where our heads nearly touched the ceiling.

"Messieurs, the air is keen," he said in a curiously formal tone. "Will you please to close the shutter?"

The King, amused and full of wonder, looked round. The room contained little besides a table, a stool, and a lamp standing in a basin on the floor; but an alcove, curtained with black, dingy hangings, broke one wall. "Your father lies there?" Henry said, pointing to it.

"Yes, monsieur."

"He feels the cold?"

"Yes, monsieur. Will you please to close the shutter?"

I went to it, and, leaning out, managed, with a little difficulty, to comply. Meanwhile, the King, gazing curiously at the curtains, gradually approached the alcove. He hesitated long, he told me afterwards, before he touched the hangings; but at length, feeling sure that there was something more in the business than appeared, he did so. Drawing one gently aside, as I turned from the window, he peered in; and saw just what he had been led to expect—a huddled form covered with dingy bed-clothes and a grey head lying on a ragged, yellow pillow. The man's face was turned to the wall; but, as the light fell on him, he sighed and, with a shiver, began to move. The King dropped the curtain.

The adventure had not turned out as well as he had hoped; and, with a whimsical look at me, he laid a crown on the table, said a kind word to the boy, and we went out. In a moment we were in the street.

It was my turn now to rally him, and I did so without mercy; asking if he knew of any other beauteous damsel who wanted her shutter closed, and whether this was the usual end of his adventures. He took the jest in good part, laughing fully as loudly at himself as I laughed; and in this way we had gone a hundred paces or so very merrily, when, on a sudden, he stopped.

"What is it, sire?" I asked.

"Hola!" he said, "The boy was clean."

"Clean?"

"Yes; hands, face, clothes. All clean."

"Well, sire?"

"How could he be? His father in bed, no one even to close the shutter. How could he be clean?"

"But, if he was, sire?"

For answer Henry seized me by the arm, turned me round without a word, and in a moment was hurrying me back to the house. I thought that he was going thither again, and followed reluctantly; but twenty paces short of the door he crossed the street, and drew me into a doorway. "Can you see the shutter?" he said. "Yes? Then watch it, my friend."

I had no option but to resign myself, and I nodded. A moist and chilly wind, which blew through the street and penetrating our cloaks made us shiver, did not tend to increase my enthusiasm; but the King was proof even against this, as well as against the kennel smells and the tedium of waiting, and presently his persistence was rewarded. The shutter swung slowly open, the noise made by its collision with the wall coming clearly to our ears. A minute later the boy appeared in the doorway, and stood looking up and down.

"Well," the King whispered in my ear, "what do you make of that, my friend?"

I muttered that it must be a beggar's trick.

"They would not earn a crown in a month," he answered. "There must be something more than that at the bottom of it."

Beginning to share his curiosity, I was about to propose that we should sally out and see if the boy would repeat his overture to us, when I caught the sound of footsteps coming along the street. "Is it Maignan?" the King whispered, looking out cautiously.

"No, sire," I said. "He is in yonder doorway."

Before Henry could answer, the appearance of two strangers coming along the roadway confirmed my statement. They paused opposite the boy, and he advanced to them. Too far off to hear precisely what passed, we were near enough to be sure that the dialogue was in the main the same as that in which we had taken part. The men were cloaked, too, as were we, and presently they went in, as we had gone in. All, in fact, happened as it had happened to us, and after the necessary interval we saw and heard the shutter closed.

"Well," the King said, "what do you make of that?"

"The shutter is the catch-word, sire."

"Ay, but what is going on up there?" he asked. And he rubbed his hands.

I had no explanation to give, however, and shook my head; and we stood awhile, watching silently. At the end of five minutes the two men came out again and walked off the way they had come, but more briskly. Henry moreover, whose observation was all his life most acute, remarked that whatever they had been doing they carried away lighter hearts than they had brought. And I thought the same.

Indeed, I was beginning to take my full share of interest in the adventure; and in place of wondering, as before, at Henry's persistence, found it more natural to admire the keenness which he had displayed in scenting a mystery. I was not surprised, therefore, when he gripped my arm to gain my attention, and, a the window fell slowly open again, drew me quickly into the street, and hurried me across it and through the doorway of the house.

"Up!" he muttered in my ear. "Quickly and quietly, man! If there are to be other visitors, we will play the spy. But softly, softly; here is the boy!"

We stood aside against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe; and the child, guiding himself by the handrail, passed us in the dark without suspicion, and pattered on down the staircase. We remained as we were until we heard him cross the threshold, and then we crept up; not to the uppermost landing, where the light, when the door was opened, must betray us, but to that immediately below it. There we took our stand in the angle of the stairs and waited, the King, between amusement at the absurdity of our position and anxiety lest we should betray ourselves, going off now and again into stifled laughter, from which he vainly strove to restrain himself by pinching me.

I was not in so gay a mood myself, however, the responsibility of his safety lying heavy upon me; while the possibility that the adventure might prove no less tragical in the sequel than it now appeared comical, did not fail to present itself to my eyes in the darkest colours. When we had watched, therefore, five minutes more—which seemed to me an hour—I began to lose faith; and I was on the point of undertaking to persuade Henry to withdraw, when the voices of men speaking at the door below reached us, and told me that it was too late. The next moment their steps crossed the threshold, and they began to ascend, the boy saying continually, "This way, messieurs, this way!" and preceding them as he had preceded us. We heard them approach, breathing heavily, and but for the balustrade, by which I felt sure that they would guide themselves, and which stood some feet from our corner, I should have been in a panic lest they should blunder against us. But they passed safely, and a moment later the boy opened the door of the room above. We heard them go in, and without a second's hesitation we crept up after them, following them so closely that the door was scarcely shut before we were at it. We heard, therefore, what passed from the first: the child's request that they would close the shutter, their hasty compliance, and the silence, strange and pregnant, which followed, and which was broken at last by a solemn voice. "We have closed one shutter," it said, "but the shutter of God's mercy Is never closed."

"Amen," a second person answered in a tone so distant and muffled that it needed no great wit to guess whence it came, or that the speaker was behind the curtains of the alcove. "Who are you?"

"The cure of St. Marceau," the first speaker replied.

"And whom do you bring to me?"

"A sinner."

"What has he done?"

"He will tell you."

"I am listening."

There was a pause on this, a long pause; which was broken at length by a third speaker, in a tone half sullen, half miserable. "I have robbed my master," he said.

"Of how much?"

"Fifty livres."

"Why?"

"I lost it at play."

"And you are sorry."

"I must be sorry," the man panted with sudden fierceness, "or hang!" Hidden though he was from us, there was a tremor in his voice that told a tale of pallid cheeks and shaking knees, and a terror fast rising to madness.

"He makes up his accounts to-morrow?"

"Yes."

Someone in the room groaned; it should have been the culprit, but unless I was mistaken the sound came through the curtains. A long pause followed. Then, "And if I help you," the muffled voice resumed, "will you swear to lead an honest life?"

But the answer may be guessed. I need not repeat the assurances, the protestations and vows of repentance, the cries and tears of gratitude which ensue; and to which the poor wretch, stripped of his sullen indifference, completely abandoned himself. Suffice it that we presently heard the clinking of coins, a word or two of solemn advice from the cure, and a man's painful sobbing; then the King touched my arm, and we crept down the stairs. I was for stopping on the landing where we had hidden ourselves before; but Henry drew me on to the foot of the stairs and into the street.

He turned towards home, and for some time did not speak. At length he asked me what I thought of it.

"In what way, sire?"

"Do you not think," he said in a voice of much emotion, "that if we could do what he does, and save a man instead of hanging him, it would be better?"

"For the man, sire, doubtless," I answered drily; "but for the State it might not be so well. If mercy became the rule and justice the exception—there would be fewer bodies at Montfaucon and more in the streets at daylight. I feel much greater doubt on another point."

Shaking off the moodiness that had for a moment overcome him, Henry asked with vivacity what that was.

"Who he is, and what is his motive?"

"Why?" the King replied in some surprise—he was ever of so kind a nature that an appeal to his feelings displaced his judgment. "What should he be but what he seems?"

"Benevolence itself?"

"Yes."

"Well, sire, I grant that he may be M. de Joyeuse, who has spent his life in passing in and out of monasteries, and has performed so many tricks of the kind that I could believe anything of him. But if it be not he—"

"It was not his voice," Henry said, positively.

"Then there is something here," I answered, "still unexplained. Consider the oddity of the conception, sire, the secrecy of the performance, the hour, the mode, all the surrounding circumstances! I can imagine a man currying favour with the basest and most dangerous class by such means. I can imagine a conspiracy recruited by such means. I can imagine this shibboleth of the shutter grown to a watchword as deadly as the 'TUEZ!' of '72. I can imagine all that, but I cannot imagine a man acting thus out of pure benevolence."

"No?" Henry said, thoughtfully. "Well, I think that I agree with you." and far from being displeased with my warmth (as is the manner of some sovereigns when their best friends differ from them), he came over to my opinion so completely as to halt and express his intention of returning and probing the matter to the bottom. Midnight had gone, however; it would take some little time to retrace our steps; and with some difficulty I succeeded in dissuading him, promising instead to make inquiries on the morrow, and having learned who lived in the house, to turn the whole affair into a report, which should be submitted to him.

This amused and satisfied him, and, expressing himself well content with the evening's diversion—though we had done nothing unworthy either of a King or a Minister—he parted from me at the Arsenal, and went home with his suite.

It did not occur to me at the time that I had promised to do anything difficult; but the news which my agents brought me next day—that the uppermost floor of the house in the Rue Pourpointerie was empty—put another face upon the matter. The landlord declared that he knew nothing of the tenant, who had rented the rooms, ready furnished, by the week; and as I had not seen the man's face, there remained only two sources whence I could get the information I needed—the child, and the cure of St. Marceau.

I did not know where to look for the former, however; and I had to depend on the cure. But here I carne to an obstacle I might easily have foreseen. I found him, though an honest man, obdurate in upholding his priest's privileges; to all my inquiries he replied that the matter touched the confessional, and was within his vows; and that he neither could, nor dared—to please anyone, or for any cause, however plausible—divulge the slightest detail of the affair. I had him summoned to the arsenal, and questioned him myself, and closely; but of all armour that of the Roman priesthood is the most difficult to penetrate, and I quickly gave up the attempt.

Baffled in the only direction in which I could hope for success, I had to confess my defeat to the King, whose curiosity was only piqued the more by the rebuff. He adjured me not to let the matter drop, and, suggesting a number of persons among whom I might possibly find the unknown, proposed also some theories. Of these, one that the benevolent was a disguised lady, who contrived in this way to give the rein at once to gallantry and charity, pleased him most; while I favoured that which had first occurred to me on the night of our sally, and held the unknown to be a clever rascal, who, to serve his ends, political or criminal, was corrupting the commonalty, and drawing people into his power.

Things remained in this state some weeks, and, growing no wiser, I was beginning to think less of the affair—which, of itself, and apart from a whimsical interest which the King took in it, was unimportant—when one day, stopping in the Quartier du Marais to view the works at the new Place Royale, I saw the boy. He was in charge of a decent-looking servant, whose hand he was holding, and the two were gazing at a horse that, alarmed by the heaps of stone and mortar, was rearing and trying to unseat its rider. The child did not see me, and I bade Maignan follow him home, and learn where he lived and who he was.

In an hour my equerry returned with the information I desired. The child was the only son of Fauchet, one of the Receivers-General of the Revenue; a man who kept great state in the largest of the old-fashioned houses in the Rue de Bethisy, where he, had lately entertained the King. I could not imagine anyone less likely to be concerned in treasonable practices; and, certain that I had made no mistake in the boy, I was driven for a while to believe that some servant had, perverted the child to this use. Presently, however, second thoughts, and the position of the father, taken, perhaps, with suspicions that I had for a long time entertained of Fauchet—in common with most of his kind—suggested an explanation, hitherto unconsidered. It was not an explanation very probable at first sight, nor one that would have commended itself to those who divide all men by hard and fast rules and assort them like sheep. But I had seen too much of the world to fall into this mistake, and it satisfied me. I began by weighing it carefully; I procured evidence, I had Fauchet watched; and, at length, one evening in August, I went to the Louvre.

The King was dicing with Fernandez, the Portuguese banker; but I ventured to interrupt the game and draw him aside. He might not have taken this well, but that my first word caught his attention.

"Sire," I said, "the shutter is open."

He understood in a moment. "St. Gris!" He exclaimed with animation. "Where? At the same house?"

"No, sire; in the Rue Cloitre Notre Dame."

"You have got him, then?"

"I know who he is, and why he is doing this."

"Why?" the King cried eagerly.

"Well, I was going to ask for your Majesty's company to the place," I answered smiling. "I will undertake that you shall be amused at least as well as here, and at a cheaper rate."

He shrugged his shoulders. "That may very well be," he said with a grimace. "That rogue Pimentel has stripped me of two thousand crowns since supper. He is plucking Bassompierre now."

Remembering that only that morning I had had to stop some necessary works through lack of means, I could scarcely restrain my indignation. But it was not the time to speak, and I contented myself with repeating my request. Ashamed of himself, he consented with a good grace, and bidding me go to his: closet, followed a few minutes later. He found me cloaked to the eyes, and with a soutane and priest's hat; on my arm. "Are those for me?" he said.

"Yes, sire."

"Who am I, then?"

"The cure of St. Germain."

He made a wry face. "Come, Grand Master," he said; "he died yesterday. Is not the jest rather grim?"

"In a good cause," I said equably.

He flashed a roguish look at me. "Ah!" he said, "I thought that that was a wicked rule which only we Romanists avowed. But, there; don't be angry. I am ready."

Coquet, the Master of the Household, let us out by one of the river gates, and we went by the new bridge and the Pont St. Michel. By the way I taught the King the role I wished him to play, but without explaining the mystery; the opportune appearance of one of my agents who was watching the end of the street bringing Henry's remonstrances to a close.

"It is still open?" I said.

"Yes, your excellency."

"Then come, sire," I said, "I see the boy yonder. Let us ascend, and I will undertake that before you reach the street again you shall be not only a wiser but a richer sovereign."

"St. Gris!" he answered with alacrity. "Why did you not say that before, and I should have asked no questions. On, on, in God's name, and the devil take Pimentel!"

I restrained the caustic jest that rose to my lips, and we proceeded in silence down the street. The boy, whom I had espied loitering in a doorway a little way ahead, as if the great bell above us which had just tolled eleven had drawn him out, peered at us a moment askance; and then, coming forward, accosted us. But I need not detail the particulars of a conversation which was almost word for word the same as that which had passed in the Rue de la Pourpointerie; suffice it that he made the same request with the same frank audacity, and that, granting it, we were in a moment following hint up a similar staircase.

"This way, messieurs, this way!" he said; as he had on that other night, while we groped our way upwards in the dark. He opened a door, and a light shone out; and we entered a room that seemed, with its bare walls and rafters, its scanty stool and table and lamp, the very counterpart of that other room. In one wall appeared the dingy curtains of an alcove, closely drawn; and the shutter stood open, until, at the child's request, expressed in the same words, I went to it and closed it.

We were both so well muffled up and disguised, and the light of the lamp shining upwards so completely distorted the features, that I had no fear of recognition, unless the King's voice betrayed him. But when he spoke, breaking the oppressive silence of the room, his tone was as strange and hollow as I could wish.

"The shutter is closed," he said; "but the shutter of God's mercy is never closed!"

Still, knowing that this was the crucial moment, and that we should be detected now if at all, I found it; an age before the voice behind the curtains answered "Amen!" and yet another age before the hidden speaker continued "Who are you?"

"The cure of St. Germain," Henry responded.

The man behind the curtains gasped, and they were for a moment violently agitated, as if a hand seized them and let them go again. But I had reckoned that the unknown, after a pause of horror, would suppose that he had heard amiss and continue his usual catechism. And so it proved. In a voice that shook a little, he asked, "Whom do you bring to me?"

"A sinner," the King answered.

"What has he done?"

"He will tell you."

"I am listening," the unknown said.

The light in the basin flared up a little, casting dark shadows on the ceiling, and at the same moment the shutter, which I had failed to fasten securely, fell open with a grinding sound. One of the curtains swayed a little in the breeze, "I have robbed my master," I said, slowly.

"Of how much?"

"A hundred and twenty thousand crowns."

The bed shook until the boards creaked under it; but this time no hand grasped the curtains. Instead, a strained voice—thick and coarse, yet differing from that muffled tone which we had heard before—asked, "Who are you?"

"Jules Fauchet."

I waited. The King, who understood nothing but had listened to my answers with eager attention, and marked no less closely the agitation which they caused in the unknown, leant forward to listen. But the bed creaked no more; the curtain hung still; even the voice, which at last issued from the curtains, was no more like the ordinary accents of a man than are those which he utters in the paroxysms of epilepsy. "Are you—sorry?" the unknown muttered—involuntarily, I think; hoping against hope; not daring to depart from a formula which had become second nature. But I could fancy him clawing, as he spoke, at his choking throat.

France, however, had suffered too long at the hands of that race of men, and I had been too lately vilified by them to feel much pity; and for answer I lifted a voice that to the quailing wretch must have been the voice of doom. "Sorry?" I said grimly. "I must be—or hang! For to-morrow the King examines his books, and the next day I—hang!"

The King's hand was on mine, to stop me before the last word was out; but his touch came too late. As it rang through the room one of the curtains before us was twitched aside, and a face glared out, so ghastly and drawn and horror-stricken, that few would have known it for that of the wealthy fermier, who had grown sleek and fat on the King's revenues. I do not know whether he knew us, or whether, on the contrary, he found this accusation, so precise, so accurate, coming from an unknown source, still more terrible than if he had known us; but on the instant he fell forward in a swoon.