"MY DEAR MOTHER,—My good fortune is inexpressible. The whole of your dreams for me are fulfilled: can you believe it, your son has—but I will not anticipate. I can scarcely trust it myself to be true. I informed you in mine of three days ago, which goes in the same mail as this, of our capture of the gentry of the cavern. It left me pretty scratched.

"The morning following, a courier in a grand livery came riding to the chateau to bear me a command to attend the King's hunt. This command, or invitation, is conveyed by a great card, which I have before me, engraved in a beautiful writing surrounded by a border exquisitely representing hounds, deer, and winding-horns with their straps. It begins: 'From the King.' Above are the arms of France, the signature is that of the chamberlain. You may think into what ecstasy it threw me when my valet handed me these. (You know everybody in society must have a valet here). My limbs seemed to lose their bruises, and I hastened to the Chevalier, who was much pleased with this testimony of the credit I appeared to have brought him, for, with the greatest affection and generosity, he continues to consider me in the light of a son. He told me how to act at the ceremonies and the hunt, and to take care not to ride across the path of the King, for that is a thing which makes his Majesty very angry. We talked it over perfectly. The only point to which he took objection was that the card was addressed to "Monsieur de Repentigny."

"'I hope,' he said, 'there will be no trouble about this. There was a Repentigny in the army of Canada. We must try to get rid of this name.'

"'If I am at fault with it,' returned I, 'I will make public at once how it has come to be attached to me without my seeking. Even if an owner of it should occur, he must as a man of honour accept my explanation.'

"'True,' answered he, 'I am here to witness that. Do not change it for a day or two. It would be excessively embarrassing for you were it to be altered on this occasion, for the decrees have of late years been very strict about birth.'

"'Would these decrees exclude me from this invitation?' I asked him.

"'Unquestionably,' he replied. 'And that would be too cruel; you are as good a man as any of them.'

"'Very well,' I answered. 'Afterwards I can return to my proper station.'

"But, dear mother, you cannot think what these words meant to me, notwithstanding that I ought to have known it to be so. I left him at once and fled into the park in order to hide my suffering. Oh, it is too beautiful to lose—this sphere of honour and refinement, this world of the lovely, the ancestral, this supreme enchantment of the earth. Having tasted it, how can I return to the common and despised condition of mankind in general! Mother, you who have taught me that this is my true world, I leave it to you to answer.

"That afternoon we drove into the town of Fontainebleau, where there was a very fine haberdasher, just come from Paris, who agreed to make me the proper suit and to supply all the accessories. Two days after, I put on the uniform of a debutant, which cost me pretty dear but made a fine figure. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I longed for your spirit to have been in the glass only to see your son in such an array. The coat was dove-grey satin; waistcoat of dark red, finely figured, with silver buttons; small clothes of red, white silk stockings, and jewelled shoes with the red heels which are worn at Court. I also bought a new dress sword. It has an openwork silver handle and guard; the blade sheathed in a white scabbard, which is silver-mounted. I wore large frills and a small French hat finely laced with gold; and I bought besides long hunting-boots.

"I drove in our coach to the Palace. As I entered the gates the officer of the guard espied the livery of the Chevalier, and immediately caused his company to salute me, observing which all the gentlemen standing near took off their hats and bowed to me. I drove into the Court of the White Horse, a great square, one of the five around which this vast palace is built, and at the entrance door I was met by my dear friend Baron de Grancey.

"The Baron said to me, 'Did you not tell us you had never been to Court before?'

"I answered that I had not; and, indeed, my debutant dress and ignorance were sufficient witness to it.

"'You must, then, have all the honours,' he said. 'He who comes up for the first time registers his genealogy and has a right to ride in the King's carriages.'

"'Then it is a great thing to ride in the King's carriages?'

"'My dear friend, it is the right of the noble,' replied he, a little surprised.

"'Ah, yes, my mother once told me so,' said I. (Dear mother, is it not true that you said it?)

"'You shall also play cards with the Queen in the evening.'

"'Oh, no,' gasped I.

"'You must,' he returned. 'This honour also is indispensable. After your debut is over you can be as modest as you please.'

"We arrived by that time at the end of a corridor and before a lofty chamber, the doors of which were emblazoned in colours with the arms and devices of France. Within we found the royal genealogist sitting in his robes of office with the heralds of the royal orders. Round about were large volumes, the registers of the noblesse, which they were consulting respecting the parchment titles produced by young gentlemen in person or through their secretaries; and I was told that before being presented one must show certificates of descent in both lines since the fourteenth century. I was so shocked at my situation that I became angry, so that, when the King's genealogist stretched out his hand for my papers, I answered proudly, 'I have none.'

"'What is my lord's name?' he asked most respectfully. Here my tongue refused to move. But the Baron interfered, replying—

"'Monsieur de Repentigny. He is far from home, and therefore cannot produce his titles; but I speak for him as a relative of the Chevalier de Bailleul.'

"'Monsieur,' replied the King's genealogist to me graciously, 'the name of Repentigny needs no parchments.'

"He ordered one of the secretaries to give me forthwith his brief of attestation (I still have it). Thus, dear mother, this Baron has won my gratitude for ever. But attend to what followed, for it is better still.

"It was in the great hall of the Palace, where the walls and the ceiling are tapestried with pictures of kings riding the chase. Baron de Grancey brought me to the Prince de Poix, who acceded to his request to present me to the Monarch. This Prince is, as I have told you, a very amiable man, and is obliged to me.

"The whole Court was there. There was the Archbishop of Paris; the King's elder brother, whom they call Monsieur; the Dukes and Peers of France, with their blue ribbons across their breasts; and a countless crowd of lords and great ladies dressed in state. Picture to yourself a garden full of the rarest flowers sparkling in the sun after a shower and bending gracefully to the wind; for such they resembled. I mentally named one my lord Violet, another my lady Rose, a third was the Eglantine, another the White Lily; so I pleased myself with distinguishing them.

"The trumpets sound, the music sweeps ravishingly into the air. In passes the King. He is attended by his guards of the sleeve and the princes of the blood. The Prince de Poix steps forward and speaks my name. I tremble. Everybody whispers and stares at us. Ah, mother, what a moment! I know not what passed. His Majesty said, 'You are the hero of the forest?' smiled, heard my incoherent whisper, and passed on with his train, smiling to others.

"Mother dear, I have seen the Sun-King! I have heard the voice to which Europe listens! I have spoken to Saint Louis and Charlemagne!

"I have not reserved enough money from the furs. Send me 3,000 livres as quickly as possible. I am writing this in my chamber here, for I am to be ready for the hunt early to-morrow morning. Every sound I hear tells of the presence of Majesty; every sight I get from the window of this dwelling of our ancient monarchs recalls a score out of the thousand legends which everybody has been telling me.

"Convey my deepest affection to my father and Angelique, and to Marie and Lacroix, and everybody in St. Elphege, and remember always that I am

"Your dear "GERMAIN.

"To Madame F. X. Lecour, "Repentigny, in Canada. "(By way of London.)

"Post Scriptum.—The Queen's Game took place last night after I wrote the above to you. Their Majesties sat at a great round green table, surrounded by all the Court.

"There were some smaller tables, at which several great ladies and lords sat and played; but everybody's eyes were on the Queen, who is so marvellously queenly, and on the King with his stars and his blue ribbon. They two put down their gold (which was in perfectly new pieces) and dealt the cards a little. I was given a turn with her Majesty, who smiled and addressed me, at which I almost fainted. And, mother, the Count de Vaudreuil, whom you used to see as a child, was there. I took special notice of him for you. He has a very fine figure and is one of the greatest courtiers.

"After that, we went off with our friends and had supper and played nearly all night.

"At daybreak everybody went to the hunt. I and the other debutants were driven to the rendezvous in the carriages of the King, drawn by white horses. There the grooms gave me a magnificent golden mare, who knew her work so well that she carried me in at the death of the stag next after his Majesty. (I tremble at what would have happened had I got there before him.) The Queen came up among the first. She enjoys the hunt.

"G. L."



CHAPTER XII

GERMAIN GOES TO PARIS

It appears from the foregoing letter that Germain, before his presentation, had vacillated in his purpose, so far as his using the name Repentigny was concerned. All such vacillation vanished in the excitement of his taste of Court life. The fresh fact—of which Grancey informed him—that Cyrene had been carried off to Versailles by the Princess (which he interpreted to mean by the Abbe) only enriched with a pensive strain, and allowed him to lend an undivided attention to, the fascinating scenes which surrounded him, full of rich life and colour like the splendid pictorial tapestries adorning the halls of Fontainebleau.

On his return to Eaux Tranquilles, the Chevalier advanced at the gate, where he had doubtless been waiting some time, and, drawing a small newspaper out of his coat, said in grave fashion—

"Germain, there is something in the Gazette de France, which, I fear, means mischief."

Lecour took the paper with a heart-throb and read—

"The Marquis de Gruchy, the Count de Longueville, the Chevaliers des Trois-Maisons and de Refsentigny, who had previously the honour of being presented to the King, had, on the 8th instant, that of entering the carriages of of his Majesty and following him to the chase."

His face crimsoned. He looked at the Chevalier.

"I have mentioned," said the latter, a troubled look appearing on his sensitive face, "that the name of Repentigny was that of an officer whom I knew when our army was in Canada. He was a Canadian of the family of Le Gardeur, who still lives, bearing the title of Marquis, and is, I believe, Governor of Pondicherry or Mahe in our Indian possesions. Should the name reach him through the Gazette as being worn by you, it might lead to the Bastille. That I would not willingly see befall you, dear boy."

Germain was touched with the kindness in his friend's voice.

"What should I do?" he asked, faltering.

"Remain at Eaux Tranquilles, resume your own name, and enjoy life quietly, with all I possess yours."

Tears rose in the young man's eyes. "Your goodness, my second father, is incredible."

"You remain, then?" asked de Bailleul eagerly. The conflict of the moonlight night was once more going on in Lecour's breast. The forces on both sides were strong.

"Give me an hour to think, sir. See, this paragraph does not contain any risk; the word is printed 'Refsentigny.'"

The Chevalier scanned it anew.

"True," said he. "But," he continued, "did you not know there is a shadow over this name? Have you heard the story of the 'Golden Dog'?"

"Of Quebec?"

"Yes."

Germain's eyes opened with interest.

"I have passed a great stone house there with a golden dog and an inscription above its door. I could not but remember it, the more so that my father refused to utter a word concerning it, though it was clear he knew some explanation. It was a curious black-faced house three stories high, eight windows wide, a stiff row of peaked dormers along the attic. From the edge of the cliff it looked over the whole country. There were massive steps of stone before it as if gushing out of the door and spreading on every side; above the door, which was tall and narrow, was the stone with the sculpture of the dog. Is that the golden dog you mean?"

"It is. There happened the most luckless deed in New France. The man who built that house was the citizen Nicholas Philibert, who had risen to wealth out of his business of baker, and was respected throughout the whole town. Bigot, the Intendant of the colony, was bringing the public finances to appalling ruin by his thefts and extravagances—for we all knew he was a robber—and was driving the people to madness. The Bourgeois Philibert was their mouthpiece. If the chateau of St. Louis stood out as the castle of the military officialdom and the Intendants Palace as the castle of the civil officialdom, the house of the Bourgeois Philibert was the castle of the people, standing against them perched upon the cliff at the head of the artery of traffic which united the Upper and Lower towns. It was too marked a challenge. Bigot determined to harass him. He sent Pierre de Repentigny, then a lieutenant in the provincials and a young fellow of the rashest temper, to billet in Philibert's house, though he had no right to do so, as Philibert, being a King's Munitioner, was exempt from billeting. Bigot knew there would be a quarrel. It turned out as he had foreseen. Philibert stood at his door and refused to allow Repentigny to enter. Repentigny insisted. Philibert loudly claimed his right, and the protection of the law from the outrage. Repentigny covered him with sneers, and pushed inward across the threshold. The merchant upbraided him for his want of respect for grey hairs and the rights of the people. Repentigny thereupon flew into a rage. He rushed on Philibert, drew his sword with a curse and thrust him through the body, which fell out of the door upon the street, and the citizen died in a few minutes."

"How frightful!"

"Philibert's remains were followed into the cathedral by a weeping multitude. A number of us officers attended as a protest against Bigot. In the evening Repentigny was burnt in effigy by the masses in the square of Notre Dame des Victoires in the Lower Town. Philibert's son swore eternal vengeance, and had inserted the great stone over the door of the mansion which bore the figure that you have seen, of the golden dog crouching and gnawing a bone, and underneath it the legend:

"I am a dog who gnaws a bone, In gnawing it I take my rest; A day will come which has not come, When I shall bite him who bit me."

"Subsequently Repentigny was always held in disgrace, and after the loss of Canada he took refuge on the other side of the world. They say young Philibert has followed him thither. What do you think of the story?"

Germain shuddered and did not answer.

"Are you willing to wear the name?"

He shuddered again and hesitated. Finally he answered with a white face—

"I am willing to wear it long enough to see Versailles. But with your permission only."

"Not so, Germain, I entreat you as a free man."

"It is hard. It is to give up so much for ever."

"This sacrifice is the call of Honour, which stands above every consideration. Promise to remember that in deciding."

"I promise it," exclaimed Germain, who stood pondering. "Yet, sir, tell me one thing."

"Willingly."

"That should I decide to go, I am at least not to lose your affection."

"No, no, Germain, you have it for ever. Have no fear of that, whatever else. The heart of the father changes not towards the son. Nor shall ever your secret be lost through me. But, alas! I see you already resolving to do that that my honour, to which I refer every question, does not commend."

The old man turned away leaving him agitated and unable to answer. The tide of love swept over his miserable heart and the form of Cyrene rose in his thoughts. Her eyes turned the balance. How vast to him was their argument.

"I cannot," he exclaimed desperately.

The more he dwelt upon it the more he found this a settled point. Of us who think ourselves stronger, how many ever had such a temptation?

In a few hours he had left Eaux Tranquilles for Paris.

Dominique brought him to a house in the Quartier du Temple where there was an apartment which de Bailleul often occupied: there they installed themselves.

During the morning Germain would have in some obscure fencing or deportment master whose instructions he would adapt to suit himself. In the afternoon he would stroll off among the pleasure seekers who crowded the ramparts or the arcades of the Palais Royal, or would study the externals of high life in the Faubourg St Germain. His evenings were largely spent in the parterre of the opera.

His signature, in place of plain "Germain Lecour" now read: "LeCour de Repentigny," with the capital "C," or "Repentigny" alone, in a bold hand, with a paraph. And there appeared on his fob a seal cut with a coat of arms highly foliaged—azure with silver chevrons and three leopards' heads gold, which he had discovered to be the Repentigny device. With it he sealed the wax on his letters. He had bought indeed a pocket Armorial, the preface to which was as follows:—

"To the Incomparable French Noblesse.

"The Author presents to you, valiant and courageous Noblesse, the Diamond Armorial, which, despite the malice of the Times and the Flight of Centuries, will carefully preserve the Lustre of your name and the Glory of your Arms emblazoned in their true colours. This glorious heraldic material is a Science of State. Though it is not absolutely necessary that all gentlemen should know how to compose and blazon arms, it is Very Important for them to know their Own and not be ignorant of Those of Others. It is the office of the Heralds to form, charge, break, crown and add Supporters to, the coats of those who by some Brave and Generous action have shown their High and Lofty virtues; whereof Kings make use to recompense to their gentry this mark of Honour and Dignity; that so they may Impel each to goodly conduct on those occasions where Men of Stout Hearts acquire Glory for themselves, and Their Posterity...."

In his chamber, on the day when he bought it, he left it on the table and the open page began—

"The glorious house of MONTMORENCY beareth a shield of gold with a scarlet cross, cantoned with sixteen azure eagles, four by four."



CHAPTER XIII

A JAR IN ST. ELPHEGE

At noon, on a day late in October, 1786, the Merchant of St. Elphege sat at the pine dinner-table in his kitchen, opposite his wife, resting his wooden soup spoon on its butt on the table. The windows, both front and rear, were wide open, for one of those rare fragrant golden days of late autumn still permitted it. He was listening, with some of the stolid Indian manner, to his wife reading Germain's letter. He vouchsafed only one remark, and that a mercantile one: "Seven weeks, mon Dieu! the quickest mail I ever got from France!" From time to time, while he listened, his eyes glanced out with contentment upon the possessions with which he was surrounded—upon the rich-coloured stubble of his clearings stretching as far as eye could see down the Assumption, with their flocks, herds, and brush fences; upon the hamlet to which his enterprise had given birth, and where he could see, in one cottage, his sabotiers bent over their benches adding to their piles of wooden shoes; in others, women at the spinning wheel or loom, making the cloths of which he had improved the pattern, or weaving the fine and beautiful arrow-sashes, those ceintures flechees of which the art is now lost, yet still known as snowshoers' rareties by the name of "L'Assomption sashes"; his makers of carved elm-bottom chairs and beef mocassins; and, within his courtyard, the large and well stocked granaries, fur-attics and stores for merchandise contained in his four great buildings. His wife was dressed in cloth much more after the fashion of the world than the prunella waist, the skirt shot in colors and the kerchief on the head, which formed the Norman costume of the women seen through the cottage doors. Her silk stockings and buckled slippers marked a desire to be the gentlewoman. Her dark eyes struck one as clever. Her first husband had been the butler of the Marquis de Beauharnois when that nobleman was Governor of Canada, and she had never ceased to look back upon the recollections of high life stored away in those days in her experience.

"There!" she exclaimed, as she flourished the letter at the end of Germain's account of the reception—"Presented to the Court! Lecour, when you said I was my boy's ruin, when you grumbled at his abandoning the apothecary's shop to go to the Seminary and learn fine manners, did I not tell you my son was baked of Sevres and not of clay? At the Court of France! and presented to his Most Christian Majesty! Among Princes, Counts, Duchesses and Cardinals! What do you say to that, Lecour?"

Her husband's eyes twinkled: "That for the moment you are General Montcalm, victorious; though I remind you that General Montcalm afterwards had his Quebec."

"Quebec or no, my son is at the Court of France."

"I do not dispute that."

He began assiduously making away with his smoking pea-soup.

"Let us proceed with the letter," said she, for she had indeed shown her generalship in stopping where she did.

"Ah," she went on, pretending to scan the next words for the first time, "Germain needs three thousand livres."

"What!"

"Only three thousand."

"But he kept three thousand out of the beaver-skins; the last draft was for nine hundred; whither is this leading? Have we not to live and carry on the business? and you grow more fanciful every day, as if we were seigneurs and not peasants."

"Certainly we are not peasants—citizens, if you please: anybody will tell you that a merchant is not a peasant. There are citizens who are noble, Lecour. Why should we not make ourselves seigneurs? Who is it but the merchants who are buying up the seigniories and living in the manor-houses to-day? That is my plan."

"Three or four jackasses. Let them be jackasses. I remain Francois Xavier Lecour, the peasant."

"Well, Francois Xavier Lecour, the peasant, my son, the noble, must have these livres."

Her black eyes flashed. "Will you have the poor boy disgraced in the act of doing you credit? Look at me, unnatural father, and reflect that your child is to experience from you his earliest wrong."

Lecour quailed. His powers of spoken argument were not great. He said nothing, but rose, threw off his coat suddenly, and sat down again.

"Yes," she exclaimed, angry tears rolling down her cheeks. "Your wife will sell her wardrobe and her dowry—little enough it was—for my son shall not want while he has a mother, and that mother owns a stitch."

It was when it came to meeting clap-trap sentiment that trader's inferior grain showed, and he faltered.

"I will go as far as a thousand. It is all it is worth."

By that word he exposed the small side of an otherwise worthy nature. She sprang to the attack.

"Diable! am I linked to a skinflint?"

"A skinflint, forsooth, at a thousand livres!"

"Yes," she cried in a fresh flood of tears. "A wretch, a miser. You are unworthy, sir, to be linked to a family from whom Germain takes his gentlemanly qualities. Had he nothing but you in him, he would be a grovelling clod-hopper to-day instead of a favourite of kings."

Lecour laid down his wooden spoon in his pea-soup-bowl. He phlegmatically took his clasp knife from its pouch, hung round his neck by a string, struck his blade into the piece of cold pork upon the table and cut off a large corner, in defiant silence. But his heart was heavy. It was no pleasure to wrangle with so able a wife. He had no wish to quarrel. Only, he knew the value of a livre. Germain was really becoming a shocking expense. He felt that his wife would in the end persuade him against his better judgment. In truth he liked to hear of his son's successes, but it went against his prudence. There was to him something out of joint in the son of a man of his condition attempting to figure among the long-lined contemptuous elegants who had commanded him in the army during his youth. The gulf, he felt, was not passable with security nor credit.

Just as he was hacking off the piece of pork, a high-spirited black pony dashed into the courtyard, attached to a calash driven by a very stout, merry-eyed priest, who pulled up at the doorstep.

Lecour and Madame at once rose and hurried out to welcome him. At the same time an Indian dwarf in Lecour's service moved up silently and took the reins out of the Cure's hands. The latter came joyously in and sat down.

"Oho," he cried, surveying the preparations on the table. "My good Madame Lecour, I was right when I said an hour ago I knew where to stop at noon in my parish of Repentigny."

"Father, I have something extra for you this time," she replied laughing, and crossing to her cupboard, exhibited triumphantly a fine cold roast duck.

"You shall have absolution without confession," he cried. "Let me prepare for that with some of the magnificent pea-soup a la Lecour. Oh, day of days!"

She went to the crane at the fireplace, uncovered the hanging pot, and ladled out a deep bowl of steaming soup. At the same time she told him excitedly of Germain's presentation at Court.

"What! what! these are fine proceedings. The Lecours are always going up, up, up. Our Germain's distinction is a glory for the whole parish. Lecour here ought to be proud of it."

Flattery from his Cure weighed more with Lecour pere than bushels of argument. The wife saw her accidental advantage and took it.

"He does not like to pay for it," she remarked demurely.

"What! what! my rich friend Lecour. The owner of seventeen good farms, of three great warehouses, of four hundred cattle, of untold merchandise, and a credit of 500,000 livres in London, the best payer of tithes in the country, the father of the most brilliant son in the province, the husband of the finest wife, a woman fit to adorn the castle of the governor," cried the ecclesiastic, finishing his soup and attacking the duck.

Lecour thawed fast. But he reserved a doubt for the consideration of his confessor.

"Is it honest to pass for a noble when one is not one?"

"I do not see that he has done so. It is not his fault, in the manner that he has explained it. Let the young man enjoy himself a little and see a little of life. We are only young once, and you laics must not be too severely impeccable, otherwise what would become of us granters of absolution. Furthermore, we must not be too old-fashioned. Our people here are getting out of the strictness of the old social distinctions. It may be so too in France. On my advice, dear Lecour, accept every honour to your family your son may bring, and pay for it in the station fitted to your great means, that I may be proud of all the Lecour family when I go to Quebec and boast about my parish at the dinner-table of the Bishop. Come," exclaimed he, at length, pushing aside his plate with the ruins of the duck, "bring out that game of draughts, and let us see if the honours of Germain have not put new skill into the play of a proud father."

Madame brought out the checkerboard. She brought besides for the Cure a little glass of imported eau de vie, and her husband, taking out his bladder tobacco pouch, commenced to fill his pipe, and that of his Reverence, and to smoke himself into a condition of bliss.



CHAPTER XIV

THE OLD-IRON SHOP

An enormous yellow and black coach lumbered and strained along by the aid of six lean horses, and many elaborate springs, chains and straps, from Brittany towards Paris. The autumn roads were execrable, for the rains had been heavy, and the ruts made by the harvest-waggons were deep. The lateness of the season intensified the deserted look of rural France. Little else was to be seen along most of the route than rows of polled trees lining the highway, and here and there an old castle on a hill, or a commune of a few whitewashed cottages, where the coach would pull up at the inn and perhaps change horses. The driver and guard remained the same; but various postillions took charge and then gave up their charges to others. Travellers of assorted ranks and occupations got in and out. Of the twelve for whom there were places in the coach some remained during long distances, some shorter, but only one was faithful from Brittany to the end. He was a short-statured, country bourgeois, whose woollen stockings and faded hat gave to him a certain look of non-importance. Moreover, he was always wrapped unsociably in a brown cloak, of which he kept a fold over his lower face, and in which he snored in his corner even when all the others jumped up to escape an upset.

After several days the aspect of the country suddenly changed. Immense woods and parks rendered it even more solitary, yet strange to say the increased solitude was evidence that the hugest capital in Europe was near, for these were the hunting domains of the princes of the blood and great courtiers, which encircled Paris.

During the night there was another sudden change. The forest solitudes disappeared, the horses sped forward on fine broad roads; and soon the coach dashed with a triumphant blast into the lights and stir of Versailles, crossed its Place d'Armes and turned again into darkness along the Avenue of Paris.

At length, in the first grey of morning, it rumbled loudly over a stretch of cobbled pave, and pulled up at an iron railing inside the City wall. Here the officers of the municipal customs came out. One of the first passengers visited was the bourgeois, and his dingy black box and sleepy expression received exceptionally contemptuous usage.

"Haste, beast, open it! Dost thou think I have to wait all day? Take that," and the gendarme struck him a tap on the side with the flat of his sword.

For a second the bourgeois seemed another man. He drew up with such an inhuman gleam in his cadaverous eyes that the customs man drew back.

"Quick, then, a little," said the latter in something of an apologetic tone. The short man as rapidly recovered his self-possession. He leered in a conciliatory way upon the official and pressed a livre into his palm. The official passed the box through the gate. The coach proceeded into the City until it arrived at its heart and stopped at the entrance of that great and wide bridge, the Pont Neuf, the main artery of Paris, where most of the passengers alighted. They found themselves engulfed in a yelling multitude of porters, who scrambled for passengers and baggage as if they would tear both to pieces, which indeed they had no great aversion to doing.

The bourgeois singled out a tall man who had mingled in the scrimmage as if only for his amusement. Cuffing the others aside like puppies with his long arms, the latter lifted the black box out of the tussle and started away, followed by its owner. They plunged into that maze of tall, narrow, medieval streets of older Paris which Meryon loved to picture before they disappeared in the improvements of Napoleon. They crossed the Latin Quarter and thence wending eastward, entered finally the Quarter of St. Marcel, the wretchedest of the city, and came into a lane named the Street of the Hanged Man; where dilapidated rookeries leaned across at each other, their upper floors occupied by swarms of human beings. The bourgeois here stopped alongside his porter and spoke to him in the tone of an intimate.

"Is it far now, Hache? It is already some distance from the old place."

"Here we are; come in quick," replied Hache. He was a bold-looking, black-haired man, red-faced, unshaven, and battered with the effects of brandy-drinking.

They turned into a grimy old-iron shop. A woman sitting in a corner fixed her eyes upon them like a watch-dog. They stumbled through, climbed a dark stair, and entered a room where the traveller, without speaking to a man who lay there on a bench, locked the door, and Hache dropped the box on the table with a thud, shaking off a cap and bottle which were on it.

The man on the bench started at the noise, and got up on his elbow, his eyes opening with an effort.

"Great God, the Admiral!" he exclaimed.

The bourgeois had thrown off his hat, wig, and cloak. He was the visitor to the cavern of Fontainebleau.

"It is I, Gougeon," he returned, his death's-head face smiling.

Gougeon wore the garb of an old-iron gatherer. His countenance was unkempt, pale, scowling, with black eyes embedded in it, his hair coarse and long, his mouth hard and drooping. He pushed back the grey tuque with which his head had been covered, and without readdressing the Admiral, got up, slowly unwound the cords which bound the black box, and raised the lid. Hache looked on.

Gougeon first took out a couple of coarse articles of clothing, and uttered a grunt. His next grasp brought up a brilliant article of apparel. He raised it to examine it at the window. The garment shone even in the meagre light. It was a waistcoat of flowered silk, sown with seed-pearls. The Admiral stood by, smiling.

With the other hand Gougeon pulled out and lifted a magnificent rose-coloured dress-coat with silver buttons.

Having gazed at them all round and grunted to his own satisfaction and to that of Hache, he dived again into the box, where he fumbled around a large lump covered with linen, and at length drew out a shining article—a golden soleil, or sun-shaped stand for displaying the Host at the mass. Beside it was a finely embossed chalice of silver. His eyes and those of Hache were lost in wonder.

There came just then a tap at the door.

The articles were whipped back into their box and covered. The woman of the shop below walked in. All recovered self-possession. She bolted the door herself.

Gougeon's mate, who thus appeared among them, was a small woman of about forty, with the sharp grey eyes of a wild animal.

The coat and vessels were displayed to her by her husband.

"Admiral," she said, "where do these come from?"

The chief seemed to recognise in her a personage equal to himself. He bowed and said—

"Madame, the soleil and chalice were the Abbey of Pontcalec's, and were politely removed for safe-keeping by seven marines of the Galley-on-land."

"And this fine waistcoat?" said Madame, smiling.

"Was one of which the owner had no longer need," he said, looking at her.

"Indeed," she returned nonchalantly.

"It was a troublesome marquis who ventured home one night by a short cut. He was one of the fellows who does not believe in the necessity of a poor man living. He saw a fire of ours in the waste, and what does he do but ride up and over us. Luckily there is no blood on the waistcoat."

Madame's smile expanded. She looked the article over, picked the seed-pearls and lace with her little skinny hands, turned out the pockets, and inspected the flower-pattern of the silk.

Gougeon held the glittering soleil fast in his hands. He could not keep his scowling eyes off it. Hache took up the bottle from the floor, and poured some wine into the chalice, whence he drank it off. Madame lifted the dress-coat, and inspected it with the same feminine closeness as the vest.

"It is a good package," remarked she.

"You have not seen all," vivaciously replied the Admiral, and diving his hand into the box he drew forth and opened the black kerchief of the cave of Fontainebleau. Gougeon's hand snatched the watch of the Prince de Poix. Hache caught up the chalice, and executed a jig round the room while drinking it empty; and Madame arranged her neck to great self-satisfaction with Cyrene's necklace, while the Admiral told with no small exaggeration the story connected with the plunder.

"This brings us," he continued, "to the object of my coming. Bec, Caron, and la Tour, the three taken in the cave, are now in Paris imprisoned in the Little Chatelet. What can be done for them?"

"Nothing," answered Gougeon.

"Be still," enjoined his wife, flashing her eyes at him.

"Were it I, I would go to the galleys and get away just as I did before," exclaimed Hache.

"Hache, you have no head."

"Not so good as yours, wife Gougeon, I admit; but I escaped from the galleys."

"To force the guards is impossible," said she speculating. "Who are the witnesses?"

"I fear they are out of the question."

"Who are they?"

"The Prince de Poix."

"He will not appear in the matter. It is not like your provincial tribunals."

"Several gendarmes."

"They have their price."

"Granted; but another remains, a bad one."

"Who?"

"The aristocrat who fell into the cave. He is near us."

"His name?"

"Repentigny."

"I will do what I can. We shall see what the Galley is good for in Paris."



CHAPTER XV

THE BEGGARS' BALL

That evening there was a ball on the flat above. It was refreshingly democratic. The rag-pickers who lodged with Madame Gougeon and laid the foundation of her iron business, attended. Thither thronged the beggars, the knife-grinders, the old-bottle collectors of the neighbouring rookeries. The crookedest men of Paris, the most hideous women, the squalidest tatters were on hand. They whirled and jumped furiously in their unwashed feet; they became almost invisible in the clouds of dust; the odour sickened, the screeching and jumping deafened one. Bad, but maddening, wine was drunk in torrents. A man would kick his partner and the combatants tumble over each other in the midst of an applauding circle.

Who were these libels on women, these alleged men, these howling fiends? They were a driblet of two hundred thousand such wretches who overran and menaced the city, a product of the dense illiteracy of the time.

Wife Gougeon entered with the Admiral. They pushed their way to a long table in the corner where some sots were gambling, and sitting down on one of the benches around it, she shouted a couple of words to the man nearest to her, who bolted off into the dust and returned with a red-nosed beggar.

"Motte," said she, leering, "are you now on the Versailles roads?"

"Always," he said sharply.

"Do your division watch Versailles?"

"Without ceasing."

"This is the Admiral."

"The great Admiral? Of the Galley?"

"Certainly."

"I salute you, Chief," he said, raising a ragged arm.

"Have some brandy, Green Cap," the Admiral returned, rapping loudly for drink, which was brought.

"We want," said Madame engagingly, "to find a hog called Repentigny at Versailles."

The man snatched the bottle from the hand of the garcon, and pouring a glass off, greedily drank it before replying.

"I don't know the name. What age is he?"

"About twenty," the chief said.

"Don't you know any more about him?"

The Admiral described him as closely as possible. They took some time in the conversation. "He ought to be in the company of officers of the Bodyguard," added he. The beggar by that time was becoming unsteady with rapid libations. He nodded, dropping his head.

"Do you understand me?" shouted the Admiral.

"Repentigny," the other muttered, correctly enough.

"Can you meet us at the Place d'Armes of Versailles to-morrow?" wheedled Femme Gougeon.

He looked at her steadily and nodded deliberately.

"Is twelve o'clock too early?"

He shook his head a little.

"He will assuredly do it," she said to her companion.

The next second the beggar fell off the bench, dead drunk.

The following day at Versailles, at the entrance of the Avenue de Paris, two nuns were seen to stop and give alms to an old bent beggar. A conversation took place between them, and was interrupted by the approach of a gendarme.

"I have found him," was the beggar's whisper.

"Where?"

"At the Hotel de Noailles. Am I to kill him?" he asked excitedly.

"No," said the taller nun.

The gendarme stepped up towards the beggar.

"I arrest you for mendicity," he said, just about to lay his hand on his shoulder.

The beggar—who bore a red nose—started back with an alacrity unexpected of so aged a man. He took to his heels, and, with tatters flying, fled like an arrow from the Avenue.

The gendarme furiously looked after him. When he turned, the pair of nuns also had moved on. They were slipping round a corner which led into a by-street of the old town.

Versailles, the City of the Court, was then in the height of its splendour, gay and triumphant. Everything in it looked towards the Palace of the King, the long and lordly facade of which, with its three concentric courtyards, faced the great square of the town, the Place d'Armes; and behind lay those delicious gardens, groves and waters, the mere remains of which, such as the Tapis Vert, the Basins of Neptune and Enceladus, the Trianons, and the Orangerie, are marvels even to our day. Thousands of costumes and equipages made the town a panorama of luxury; and countless thoroughbreds, of which the King alone possessed more than two thousand, glistened and curvetted in the streets.

The neighbourhood of the Palace was naturally that of the aristocracy. The vast mansions of the Princes of the blood and the Peers of France were clustered about the sides of the Place d'Armes and the streets immediately surrounding. One of these was the Hotel de Noailles. Its range of buildings, for it surrounded a court, stood at the corner of the Rues de la Pompe et des Bons Enfans. Behind it were its gardens. Opposite, on the Rue des Bons Enfans, were the hotels of the Princes of Conde and the Dukes of Tremouille. The hotels of Luxembourg, Orleans, and Bouillon faced it on the Rue de la Pompe. The Noailles family were themselves many times of royal descent. Adjoining the hotel were the quarters of the Queen's equerries.

Germain sat in his apartment, watching, over the balcony of one of the windows, the incessant movement of lackeys, mounted officials, and carriages on the street near by. Raising his eyes across the gardens of the Tremouille Palace, he rested them with quickened delight on the elegant avenues and groves of the royal pleasure-realm, rich in the golden tones and clear air of an autumn morning.

In the midst the Basin of Neptune, glittering and shining, and with its white statues, seemed to inspire him with a happy suggestion, and he trolled to himself a ballad with a nonsensical chorus, popular in his native land—

"Behind the manor lies the mere, En roulant, ma boule; Three fair ducks skim its water clear.

En roulant, ma boule roulant. En roulant, ma boule.

Three fair ducks skim its waters clear, The King's son hunteth far and near.

The King's son draweth near the lake, He bears his gun of magic make.

With magic gun of silver bright He sights the Black but kills the White.

He sights the Black but kills the White; Ah, cruel Prince, my heart you smite."

A rap on the door interrupted him. Dominique put his head in, announcing—

"A woman, sir."

"A woman? Young and beautiful?"

"No, sir; old."

"On what errand?"

"She insists it is business."

"Let her come in."

A figure entered dressed in a faded black shawl, a red dress, and a blue linen apron, and her face shadowed in a hood. She kept back out of the window-light, and he thought she was in great distress.

"Madame," he stammered, putting aside his gaiety, and rose.

"Monseigneur, I supplicate your mercy," she sobbed.

"My mercy? I do not understand."

"Your mercy; I supplicate it," she cried in an agonised voice.

"My good woman, I would never injure you, I protest."

"I am their mother, sir; I am starving."

"Whose mother?"

She represented the prisoners as being sons of hers. When she mentioned the robbery, he recoiled. As she proceeded, however, he condoled with her and gave her a piece of money, which she took, expatiating brokenly on the dependance of her sons' necks on his evidence.

"Mon Dieu! Monsieur," she concluded, "do you know what it is to take three lives of poor men? Can you picture what it means to a parent? You have a heart—you have a God—you have a mother."

The flood of tears and hysterical sobbing were in the highest art of expert mendicancy. She advanced towards him, threw herself upon her knees at his feet, embraced his shoes, and writhed.

Germain was so shaken that for a moment he had an intention of running for a cabriolet to take him to Paris to intercede with the magistrates in the affair. He was about to follow his impulse when a consideration startled him. He had heard the Prince repeatedly speak with satisfaction of the capture of the highwaymen. To interfere with the arrests, he saw, would shock the robbed family; it would banish him, he thought, from the circle of Cyrene. The question troubled him. In a few moments he decided it: he must stretch out a hand of mercy to this woman.

Following the custom among beggars, she watched his countenance furtively during her appeals, interpreting its changes more accurately than he himself was doing, and at its last expression her eyes flashed with triumph.

"Go; I will help you," he said to her in an agitated voice, and calling Dominique, added with great courtesy, "See Madame to the gates, and help her in any way you can."

But no sooner had she left the chamber than a thought which angered him came like a flash, and stepping to the door, he called them back.

"You say these men are your sons?" he said severely, when she had come into the room; "let me see your face."

She shrank from him and hid it more deeply in her hood.

"The man who was a cultivator is forty years of age; you are no more," he pronounced, "how can you be his mother?"

A few mumbled words passed her lips, but he did not listen to them.

"The three are from three different families, three different ranks, three different Provinces, and yet you have pretended to be the parent of all of them. You are the parent of none of them, but have come here to shamefully impose upon my feelings. What you are is a confederate of the gang. Had you been the woman you have pretended I was ready to make sacrifices for you, the extent of which you cannot know. But if, instead of returning sons to a mother, I am to loose again three most dangerous criminals upon the country, it is a different affair. Be well satisfied that I do not immediately have yourself convicted as their accomplice." In his anger he motioned her to be off, and she, dropping the piece of gold which he had given her, crept away with alacrity, not daring to venture a word.

It was only as she passed down through the Prince's halls behind Dominique that she allowed her fury full possession of her, and as she glanced about on the evidences of luxury, she gnashed her teeth and hissed half aloud—

"Ah, but I would stick your throats, you fat hogs!"

"What do you say, Madame?" inquired Dominique.

"Nothing at all."

Germain threw himself again upon his chair and gave himself up to misery.



CHAPTER XVI

BROKEN ON THE WHEEL

The prisoners were condemned to death, in the terrible form of breaking on the wheel. Wife Gougeon and the Admiral returned late on the last night before the execution to the old-iron shop, dismayed and ferocious. Her vanity was deeply hurt by the failure of her plan. In the back of the shop, among piles of horse-shoes, locks, spikes, and bars, a meeting of the Big Bench of the Galley-on-land was held to decide the course to be taken. The yellow light of the dip threw their shadows into the recesses and shed its flicker on their faces. Gougeon sat picking at the candle-grease in his apathetic way. Hache cheerfully threw himself on a long box. The Admiral stood wrapped in his cloak, melodramatic as usual.

Femme Gougeon pushed into the centre.

"Men, or whatever you call yourselves," she hissed, throwing her grimy arm into the air, "will you let la Tour, Bec, and Caron die like dogs?" and her deep-set eyes scintillated from one to the other.

A sullen silence ensued.

Finding no reply, she rushed to the window-sill at the rear and took down an assortment of pike-heads and stilletti, with which were a couple of pistols. She thrust a dirk or pike-head into the hand of each, but to the Admiral she gave one of the pistols; the other she kept.

"There," shrieked she furiously, raising her arm to its full height with the pistol. "That is what I say about this."

They were still sullen and reluctant.

"What have you done, Motte?" the Admiral said, turning to the beggar of Versailles.

"I have seen Fouche; he is persuaded an escape is impossible."

"Who is Fouche?"

"A prison guard of the Chatelet, and belongs to our Galley."

"Did you tell him I had the money?"

"He says money in this case is useless; this is not an ordinary business; the Lieutenant sees to it in person on account of the King's interest in it; it is robbery from the person of a Prince, and a crime against the King on his own lands."

"Reasons only too clear," reflected the Admiral. "Where will the execution be?"

At the mention of the unpleasant word a grimace passed over Hache's face.

"On the Place de Greve," Gougeon replied, showing a little interest, "at eight to-morrow."

"How many guards will attend them?"

"Six by the cart, with their officers; and the streets are lined with the guards of Paris," continued Gougeon.

"You intend a rescue? Sacre!" vociferated Wife Gougeon. "I will be there too; they dare not arrest me. Greencaps, I tell you those white-gills fear us people, and we could kick their heads about the streets if we all stood together."

"Death to the hogs!" cried the beggar.

"Take care," Gougeon grumbled.

"What do you mean, beast?" retorted his amiable spouse.

"That there are plenty of sheep[1] on this street."

[Note 1: Spies.]

"Curse the sheep!" ejaculated the Admiral. "Go everywhere, all of you, and rouse the Galley and all ragmen for to-morrow at the Quai Pelletier at half-past seven. Return here by six sharp."

By six next morning the Council had returned, and their friends as they left the door hung about the street corner near by, amusing themselves by striking the lamp with their sticks.

At half-past six the Council issued, shouting—

"To the execution!"

Hache ran up the middle of the street repeating the cry in his stentorian voice, so that as he rushed along the dingy houses poured forth their contents after him like swarms of bees; boys, men, and women mingling pell-mell, half clothed, unkempt, fierce-mouthed, wild-faced, ignorant.

Motte, the beggar, took up the words and sped like the wind up the narrow side streets and lanes, shouting, "To the execution!"

Wife Gougeon screamed it. Even her husband opened his malign jaws from time to time and automatically gave vent to a harsh shout.

Thus sown, it became a cry springing up everywhere. The whole quarter of St. Marcel grew alive, and an immense crowd ran together into the neighbouring square. Little direction was needed to band them into a marching mob, waving clubs, pikes, and bottles, dancing, quarrelling and howling, with ribald songs and shouts of "To the execution!" In one thing they differed notably from a similar crowd in this century, could such be imagined. Ragged and wretched though they were, they wore colour in profusion. The mass was a rich subject for the artist.

Among the women at the front was seen Wife Gougeon brandishing her pistol. The Admiral and Hache were at her side haranguing the leaders. Surging along, the demoniac screams of drunken women and the babel of shouting men, as they approached each new neighbourhood, seemed to stir it to its depths and to add to the rear a new contingent.

Thus their numbers swelled at every street, and the excitement increased to a pitch beyond description. They swept forward by the Rue Mouffetard and through the Latin Quarter till they reached the broad Boulevard St. Germain. Turning along the latter through the Rue St. Jacques they suddenly increased their speed and uproar, and thundered across the Petit Pont Bridge and Isle of France, and once more across a bridge—that of Notre Dame—where they saw the Quai Le Pelletier on the other side lined with a black sea of people. At least a quarter of the population of Paris were crammed together within the available space upon the quays and the neighbouring streets along the Seine, from the towered Chatelet—court-house and prison—some distance below, to the Place de Greve, some distance above, in front of the Hotel de Ville. A line of blue-coated, white-gaitered soldiers on each side kept the space clear down the centre.

The people were looking forward to the spectacle of the morning with intense delight.

Meanwhile at the prison doors of the Chatelet the three poor wretches of prisoners were forced into a cart by gendarmes in the sight of the multitude. A man sat awaiting them in the cart, curled, powdered, dressed; and perfumed with foppish elegance, and his every motion made with a dainty sense of distinction. He was the people's hero—the public executioner. He took in his hands the ends of the rope which hung from the necks of his victims. Another figure mounted the cart behind them. It was a priest, who knelt, bent his head, and offered to each of them the crucifix; and the cart then proceeded slowly along the soldier-lined streets, accompanied by half a dozen guards carrying their muskets on their shoulders, bayonetted.

The emotions meanwhile of the condemned were told in their bearing. Young Hugues de la Tour stood up, and scornfully refusing the crucifix of the priest, looked around upon the scene with an air of irreconcilable indignation. His companions, Bec and Caron, the men who in the cave had spoken of themselves as ruined, the one by taxes, the other by the tithe, were more abject, and clutched the crucifix in despair.

Comments were shouted freely at the victims. Applause greeted the demeanour of la Tour, rough raillery the terror of his companions.

After this manner they jolted painfully along the cobbled paving, down through the swaying crowd towards the Place de Greve. Though the distance was not perhaps more than a couple of hundred yards the poor men underwent ages of tension. When they came to the Quai Le Pelletier, Hugues heard, as in a dream, a startling stentorian, familiar cry—

"Vive the Galley!"

His bloodshot eyes strained towards the place whence it came, and once more a voice, this time the shriek of a woman, pierced the air—

"Vive the Galley!"

The two other prisoners now raised their heads, still dazed and in a stupor.

Immediately a third voice, loud and shrill, but instinct with the thrill of command, took up the words. It was the Admiral, and his third "Vive the Galley!" was a signal.

Nine soldiers of the line of troops at the point nearest the prisoners were simultaneously thrown on the street, and a score of desperate men had broken into the centre and made a rush for the small guard around the carts. A cry, rising into a multitudinous commotion of shouts, went up from the gazing mob, ever on the verge of a tumult. At the same time there was a resistless swaying on all sides—the two lines of soldiers gave way for a few minutes, and people far and near rushed into the middle of the street. The vortex of St. Marcellese, at the Pont Notre Dame, already filled with winey purpose, pushed forward with a sudden bound towards their leaders and the death-cart, triumphing over their old enemies, the gendarmes, and preparing for every excess.

Femme Gougeon, as leader of a horde of viragoes, was rushing among them shrieking more fiendishly than ever. While some held down the guard or wrested away their arms, the prisoners were lifted out of the cart and began to be hurried along towards the bridge, Bec and Caron struggling like maniacs with their fetters. The mob had at this moment complete mastery.

It lasted only a few seconds. Drums began to beat towards the Place de Greve. The tocsin bell of the Hotel de Ville sounded. There was a shock—a check of the crowd's volitions. A heavy rolling-back movement took place, and a public roar of fear was heard. People on the edges ran to shelter, and in a few moments more a volley of musketry sounded down the street. The crowd broke in all directions. It scattered away as suddenly as it had risen, and through the clearing smoke the soldiers could be seen closing up and again preparing to fire in volley. The prisoners were left in the hands only of the Admiral and Hache.

"Come, come," cried the latter, urging them to run.

"Brave men, save yourselves; as for us we are lost," was the reply of la Tour.

So Hache and the Admiral disappeared.

Bec and Caron lay prostrate on the deserted pavement. Hugues stood up proudly until a musket-ball broke his arm and knocked him over.

Then the dead and wounded could be counted, scattered over the scene of the melee.

Sickening it would be to tell in full of the execution which followed.

The Place de Greve was surrounded by an entire regiment, keeping back the crowd, who soon, remastered by overpowering curiosity, struggled for standing room and strained their necks to see. A conspicuous platform had been erected in front of the Hotel de Ville. Caron was the first to suffer. At the order of the executioner he was caught hold of by two assistants, thrown down, and bound to a large St. Andrew's cross of plank which lay on the platform. The black-robed confessor knelt down at his head and held up the crucifix before him, at the same time hiding his own face by his book and the sleeve of his gown. The executioner adjusted his wig elegantly, took up and minutely examined his crowbar, and casting first a coxcomb look at the breathless spectators, brought the bar into the air with a flourish, and down with a crash on the right thigh of the poor prisoner. The agonising cry of the helpless man was drowned in a tremendous outburst of applause from the crowd. When he had been disposed of in each of his four limbs, Bec was treated in the same manner. Then the assistants, seizing Hugues, threw him on the cross, bound him, and the executioner lifted his bar in the air——



CHAPTER XVII

THE SAVING OF LA TOUR

Jude, who had the instincts of a Spanish Dominican, kept the closest watch upon the judicial proceedings against the highwaymen. He was promptly at the Chatelet at the time of their brief and summary trial, and procuring a caleche, sped Versaillesward to retail the news to the Noailles household. Having done so with considerable eclat to her Excellency, he pictured to himself an entrancing dream—that of awaking a joyful sympathy between himself and Cyrene through this highly congratulatory matter. She would smile upon him so divinely, so highly applaud his zeal, and begin to compare him favourably with that new butterfly, Repentigny, whose day must thenceforth come to an end.

It was night before he discovered her whereabouts, for she was at a ball, accompanying the Marechale de Noailles, chief lady of honour of the Queen. The Marechale was just then occupying the suite of apartments allotted to her in the Palace, and there Jude waited impatiently until half-past three before the young widow arrived in her boudoir accompanied by her maid.

"You did not expect me here, Madame Baroness," he said.

"In truth I did not, sir," she replied with cold surprise.

"I am the bearer of good news to you."

"Indeed!"

"Madame was robbed last month at Fontainebleau."

"And you bring back my jewels, good Abbe?" She began already to seem more radiant to him than he had dreamed.

"Not that quite."

"You mystify me."

"Madame will remember that three of the villains were caught."

"And Monsieur de Repentigny has found the others?" she cried, her countenance lighting again.

The Abbe's face fell.

"No, I have more agreeable news."

"You are too slow, as usual."

"Complete justice has been done!"

Her face suddenly turned to motionless marble.

"You mean on those three men?" she asked, with horror, which surprised him.

"Certainly."

"How?"

"Their legs will crack this very morning in Paris at eight o'clock."

"Those living beings whom I have seen, that cruel death!" she cried. "Where is the Prime Minister? Christ help me!"

She took no heed of her flimsy, incongruous dress, her fatigue, her need of sleep. Her soul was overwhelmed with the Christian desire to save, and in her sudden energy the girl over-awed the reptile before her.

"Why do you wait, sir?" she exclaimed. "Conduct me to the Minister instantly!"

"What, at this hour? In this manner? Does my lady reflect what will be said to-morrow throughout the town?" he ejaculated.

"You have my command," she answered him, motioning to her maid to follow.

Sometimes leading, and sometimes instructed where to go, the Abbe preceded her through a long maze of chambers and passages, in each of which sentinels were posted, until they came to the antechamber of Monsieur de Calonne.

By good luck, the Minister, like herself, had not yet retired, but was signing papers.

His astonishment was unbounded at both her appearance and her agitated and remarkable request.

"Baroness," said he, "these men for whom you have such singular though meritorious sympathy have flagrantly wronged yourself and the King. How much better are they than the thousands who suffer the same fate every year under the well-weighed sentences of the bench?"

"What rends me, sir, is to see human beings die, into whose faces I have looked."

"That speaks well for your heart, Madame; but what about the laws?"

"Are laws just under which three lives are set against a few trinkets?"

"Well, Baroness, that is the business not of you nor me, but of the magistrates. You admit at least the guilt of the criminals against society?"

"What has society done for these creatures? What have we who live at ease in Versailles done to make them good citizens? But I cease to argue, my lord, and know that in doing so I am presuming beyond any rights I might have. Listen, then, with your good heart—for all France knows the good heart of Monsieur de Calonne—to the intercession of a woman for three of her dying, neglected, and miserable fellow-men."

"They have a fair and powerful advocate," he said, smiling agreeably.

Calonne no longer resisted her appeal, but wrote the necessary order. Putting profound gratitude as well as respect into her three parting curtseys, she flew with it to her chamber.

"Get me an enrage," she exclaimed to Jude. An enrage was one of those lean post-horses specially used for quick travel to and from Paris, a distance they could make in a couple of hours.

She would trust no one with the Minister's order, but rapidly threw on a cloak and cap during the absence of the Abbe.

Enrages were generally to be had on short notice day or night, but this night it seemed as if there were none in all Versailles; her anxiety and impatience increased, and she paced the room in agony of mind. At last Jude returned, and announced the vehicle.

Descending hastily, she stepped into it, still commanding the Abbe to accompany her. As it rattled forward, she kept her eyes fixed impatiently upon the face of her watch. Half-past six—three-quarters—seven—the quarter—the half—at length they were checked at the Chatelet by the crowd surging and swaying around them, with the wave-like confusion of the riot, heard the musketry, and learned from a guard who ran to protect her the cause of the trouble, and that the execution was about to take place on the Place de Greve.

Jude, in cowardly terror, fell back in a stupor, but the coachman was of that Parisian type to whom popular danger was like champagne, and on the promise of a louis he lashed his foaming horse to the Place de Greve. The shrieks of the second victim and the shouts and drums informed Cyrene only too well what was passing. She leaped from the cabriolet, and rushed for the platform.

The strange sight of a beautiful Court lady in ball dress, pushing her way forward in such agitation, had an instantaneous effect on the crowd, and they opened a way to the centre. Stumbling past them, she threw out the paper she carried towards the officer-in-command, and fell fainting at his feet. Hugues de la Tour thus escaped execution.



CHAPTER XVIII

MADAME L'ETIQUETTE

The Oeil de Boeuf, the famous hall of the courtiers, had a magical enchantment for Lecour. When he first rested his red-heeled shoes upon its polished floor, having entered in the train of the Prince de Poix, the courtiers were awaiting the passing of the King. There were many faces he had not seen at Fontainebleau, and even those familiar showed no sign that he was remembered here. The person who stood at his elbow was an old officer, who had likewise entered with the Prince.

"I am come from the Province of Saintonge," said he, seeming glad to unburden his confidences, "and I am at Court to obtain a great honour for my son, who deserves it—my son, sir, the Chevalier de la Violette, a very gallant youth. At Saintes, under de Grasse, he led the boarding of two of our frigates, one after the other, which had been taken by the enemy, and recovered them both. After the battle, he was taken up for dead, wounded in eleven places. The deck was literally washed with his blood. I am positive the thing has only to be mentioned to the King himself for him to recognise my son's claims and appoint him sub-lieutenant in the Bodyguard. I seek that for him because of the great advantages and favours attached to it. The Prince de Poix must first be induced to recommend him, for the prize is in his company; but I have had the wit to secure in my favour the Princess's secretary, an Abbe to whom I have given forty good louis, and who is to have a hundred more in case of success. The secretary, sir, is very important. What a shame how these low-born knaves rob us poor nobles, and make officers and canons. We must, perforce, 'monsieur' them, and salute them a league off as if they were their masters. The secretary even of the wife is very important. The secretary is more important than the mistress nowadays"; and the old officer laughed at his provincial witticism.

Lecour's eyes fell on a young guard, standing with sword drawn at the door of the King's antechamber. "How secure is the place of these!" he sighed to himself; "how insecure is mine!" A friendly voice sounded, and he noticed Grancey stood before him. "Follow me before the King arrives," said he. "My service is on the Queen to-day." Germain followed. The air of mystery, characteristic of the courtiers, seemed concentrated in their looks towards him as he passed. Their speculations pieced together his entry with a powerful Prince and his familiarity with a favoured officer of the Bodyguard; and his pleasing figure was judged to give him the probability of advancement, to what height in the royal favour no one could foretell. Those among whom he passed bowed low to the mysterious fortune of the debutant.

The door through which they went led into the great Gallery of Mirrors, a much more vast and beautiful hall than the Oeil de Boeuf. It was the most attractive, in fact, in the Palace, for its range of long windows commanded, from the centre of the eminence, the whole view of the terrace and parterres, which was reflected upon the opposite side by mirrors lining the walls. Every space, every door-panel here, even the locks, was each an elaborate work of art. The ceiling was covered with the great deeds of Louis Quatorze from the brush of le Brun. Antique statues and caskets of massive silver, mosaic tables of precious stones, and priceless cabinets, encrusted with the brass and tin-work executed by the celebrated Buhl, furnished the Gallery.

Quitting Lecour, de Grancey stepped to the centre, and gave the word—

"Gentlemen of the Bodyguard, to your posts of honour!" and thus taking command of the detachment, who were gathered in a corner of the hall, he entered on his duty of disposing and inspecting them. No sooner was this completed than a rustling in the Oeil de Boeuf informed them that the King was passing. Shortly afterwards a noise like thunder was heard, and the throng of courtiers poured in from the Oeil de Boeuf, and filled the great Gallery of Mirrors. They had scarcely arranged themselves when Germain heard a cry of "The Queen!" and beheld the radiant Marie Antoinette advancing. The beautiful mistress of France passed along in state with her suite, bestowing on one and another the attention she considered due, to some a smile, to two or three a curtsey, to many merely a glance. Noticing the humble worship in Germain's eyes, his face and the exploit at Fontainebleau came back to her. She stopped, therefore, as was sometimes her wont, and said graciously, "Monsieur, we do not forget brave men," passing onward again. Instantly the Court noticed the event, and exalted him in its esteem accordingly. But before he could enjoy it, the entire scene was driven temporarily from his thoughts and became a-whirl about another figure of which in the passing train he became suddenly aware. It was the cold, impassive, scrutinising face of an aged dame of such overweening pride and keenness that he seemed to feel himself pierced through by her gaze. He had heard of the severity of the Marechale de Noailles—"Madame l'Etiquette"—Cyrene's patroness, and knew intuitively that this was she. The danger of his situation became instantaneously real. The train, accustomed to confusion, continued their advance. Only then did he notice that in charge of this old dragon walked Cyrene, her look fixed brightly upon his face.



CHAPTER XIX

THE COMMISSION

Lecour returned to the Hotel de Noailles overwhelmed with forebodings—one of those revulsions which come during long-continued excitement.

"End the farce, fool," he exclaimed to himself despondently, hurrying to the quarters of the Princess. She received him "in her bath,"—a circumstance not unusual and which meant a covered foot-bath and a handsome deshabille gown.

"Madame," he said. An emotion he could not quite hide caused him to hesitate—"my days at Versailles are ended. I am come to present my gratitude at your feet for the great kindness your Excellencies have shown me. Believe, Madame——"

"Monsieur de Repentigny, you speak of leaving us?"

"It is too true."

"Truth is the only thing I find ill-mannered. Why should you leave us?"

"Because, Madame, it is my duty."

"No gentleman should have duties. Are you discontented with Versailles?"

"On the contrary it is the place where I should be most happy."

"This is a riddle, then. Plainly, you are indispensable to us. Can I tempt you by some pension, some honour, some office? I have a benefice vacant, but should dislike to see those locks of yours tonsured. What do you say to the army?"

"It is impossible, for me."

"The army, I say, it shall be."

"Madame——"

"To-morrow I will hear your choice concerning this commission—horse, foot, or artillery?"

One did not argue with Princesses—partly because Princesses did not argue with one. He humbly retired, revolving an undefined notion of flight.

By chance Grancey entered during the afternoon.

"Homesick, just at the nick of fortune? Do you know that a sub-lieutenancy is vacant in my company? Sub-lieutenant, with rank of a Colonel of Dragoons?"

"I did not."

"You must ask for it."

"That is out of the question, my lord." The gravity and humility of his demeanour astonished Grancey, who surveyed him quizzically. "Is this a new role, Repentigny, a part from The Unconscious Philosopher? Are you ill?"

"I am leaving Versailles."

"Nonsense."

"And France."

"Never!"

"It is the case."

"But I have named you for the sub-lieutenancy."

Lecour looked up; but it was not enough to revive him from so deep a slough.

"I must go, Baron."

"Galimatias! You shall not throw away a commission in the Bodyguard of the greatest Court in Europe. My brother-officers demand you, and you must not desert me, your friend—your friend, Germain."

Germain went over to a window and looked out, to hide the tears with which his eyes were filling. In the courtyard below a coach had stopped at one of the doors. Cyrene was entering it. Why was she brought before him just at that moment. This inopportune glimpse of her cancelled all reasoning. With fevered sight he watched her till the coach disappeared, and turning, said eagerly to de Grancey—

"Is not the Prince's consent required?"

"You agree!" Grancey cried, embracing him joyfully. "As to the Prince, comrade," said he, "the sole difficulty is that he will grant anything to anybody. We must get his signature—for which I admit it is delicate to ask him—before any other applicant."

Lecour's pulses sprang back to life.

"Could the Princess assist us?" he inquired.

"Perfect!" cried the Baron.

Germain returned to her apartment. The Abbe was handing her a paper and saying—

"An entirely worthy gentleman, your Excellency, and wounded in several of the King's victories, as well as of irreproachable descent."

Germain did not guess until it was too late that this was the petition of the Chevalier de la Violette.

She was stretching out her hand to take the pen which Jude passed to her.

"Madame," Lecour exclaimed breathlessly, "I have a prayer to make to you immediately."

"Yes, Monsieur de Repentigny?"

"For a commission."

"Delightful."

"A vacant commission of sub-lieutenant in the company of the Prince."

She dropped the pen in wonder and looked at the Abbe Jude, whose face turned sickly.

And so Germain obtained a great position.

"As a matter of form," said Major Collinot, the Adjutant of the Bodyguard, at headquarters, "Monsieur de Repentigny of course proves the necessary generations of noblesse?"

"Here is the herald's attestation, sir," replied Germain, producing that which Grancey's intercession had obtained for him at Fontainebleau.

Doubly past the strictest tests of ancestry and reassured in boldness he was now ready even to play cards with the dread Marechale de Noailles—her who it was reported once said, "That although our Lord was born in a stable yet it must be remembered St. Joseph was of royal line and not any common carpenter."

The pomp and glitter of the new life appealed immensely to the youthful instincts of the Canadian. The Baron detailed to his fascinated listener the composition, privileges, and duties of the Gardes—

"We are thirteen hundred, Repentigny, in four companies—the Scotch, the Villeroy, the Noailles, and the Luxembourg, each over three hundred persons; we relieve each other every three months. Just now it is the turn of our company of Noailles. Of the three months, each man spends one on guard at the Palace, one at the hunting-lodge, and one at liberty; after that we withdraw to towns some distance apart, those of the Noailles company to Troyes in Champagne." He told with pride of what good stature and descent it was necessary to be to be received, how keenly sought after even the commissions as privates were, hence the fine picked appearance of the body. He dilated on the various instruments and startling costumes of his company's band; on the style of their horses and the magnificence of their reviews and parades; on the superiority of the pale blue cross-belts which distinguished them, over the silver and white ones of the Scotch company, the green of the Villeroys, the yellow of the Luxembourgs. These differences, he asserted, were the greatest distinctions under the sun.

Let us in our colder blood add to his description that each of these companies consisted of one captain, one adjutant, two lieutenant-commandants of squadron, three lieutenants, ten sub-lieutenants, two standard-bearers, ten quartermasters, two sub-quartermasters, twenty brigadiers or sergeants, two hundred and eighty guards, one timbalier, and five trumpeters. Germain studied the roll with great interest.



CHAPTER XX

DESCAMPATIVOS

Winter passed. The company of Noailles returned from its quarters at Troyes to Versailles. Whatever he did, his passion for Cyrene coloured every thought and scene with an artist's imposition of its own interpretations. The world in which she dwelt was to him a vision, a poem, a garden.

A change had, it is true, come over his character; he became more desperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection. The incident of the reprieve of la Tour, which had meanwhile reached him, sank deeper into his heart than the whole round of his pleasures, and made him anxious for the moment when he might again meet her.

The society in which he found himself flying, like one of a tribe of bright-plumaged birds in a grove full of song, centred around the Queen. Marie Antoinette constantly sought refuge with her intimate circle from people and Court at the gardens and dairy of the Little Trianon, in the Park of Versailles, where it was understood that ceremony was banished and the romps and pleasures of country life were in order.

In the month of June Lecour received a command to a private picnic here. It was the highest "honour" he had as yet attained. As a Canadian he had paid his respects in the beginning to the Count de Vaudreuil. The latter was the leader in the pastimes of the Queen's circle, a handsome and accomplished man, and one of social boldness as well as polish. Though in his successes at Court he affected to forget that he was of Canadian extraction, he yet evinced an interest in Lecour on that account and showed courtesy to him. When the Count therefore one day heard the Queen refer with favour to the graceful Guardsman, he added him to the next list of invitations.

The guests, about forty, all approved by Marie Antoinette, included members of both the rival sets at Court. The young Duchess of Polignac, a simple, pleasant woman whom the liking of the Queen had alone raised to importance, was there with several of her connections and friends. The Noailles family, with its haughty alliances, its long-standing greatness, and its contempt for those new people the Polignacs, was to be chiefly represented by the amiable young Duchess of Mouchy, who came late.

No picnic could have been more free and easy. The Queen herself looked a Venus-like dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it was announced that the game of the afternoon should be that called "Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the Little Trianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined to cast a Druid shade upon the lawn. Here Vaudreuil was elected high priest.

Assuming a white robe and mock-heroic solemnity, and standing out in the centre of the grass, he sang forth in a strikingly rich voice—

"Let us raise an altar to Venus the goddess of these groves."

Four attendants, moving quickly forward in response, carrying squares of turf, piled them into an altar as rapidly as possible. The party arranged themselves in a quadrangle around it.

The altar being completed, Pontiff Vaudreuil proceeded with the mystery thus—

"Listen, dryads and demi-gods, to the oracles of the divinity. The decree of Aphrodite hath it that for the space of one hour there shall be fair amity between——" Here he named the company off in pairs, carefully pre-meditated. As pair after pair were called, they stepped forward on the lawn amid a chorus of laughter, and swelled a procession facing the priest and altar.

Lecour wondered as he saw the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his astonishment, he heard the words—

"Madame la Baronne de la Roche-Vernay, and Monsieur de Repentigny."

He looked hastily around.

It was then that two ladies were seen hurrying into the arena from the direction of the Trianon. One was the Duchess de Mouchy; the other, of the same age and dressed in a simple cloud of white tulle, came behind her, and Germain, as if in an apparition, saw his Cyrene. Her obeisances to the Queen and company over, she turned and courtesied very deeply to her lover, who trembled with delight under her smile.

He was quickly recalled by the voice of de Vaudreuil, this time crying—

"Her Majesty of France, and her Majesty's servant and subject the High Priest of the goddess."

It was the invariable custom of the ambitious and confident courtier to appropriate the Queen to himself.

Pausing at the close, he raised his arm ritually towards the trees and rested thus a moment speechless.

"Descampativos!" he suddenly exclaimed in a stentorian tone, throwing off his robe.

At the word, the pairs broke ranks, the ladies screamed with merriment, and all the pairs scampered into the woods in different directions to follow what paths might suit them, bound only by the rule of the game to return in an hour.

Germain and Cyrene strayed from the others into the groves, until the voices grew fainter and fainter and at last died away. They walked on without finding any necessity of speaking, for their glances and the ever sweet pang of love in their breasts sufficed. At last they found a little space with a fountain where the water spurted up in three jets out of the points of a Triton's spear, and there being a seat there, they took it, sat down, and looked in each other's eyes.

"My love," he whispered, kissing her cheek.

"Germain," breathed she slowly, her fair breast heaving, and suddenly threw her arms around his neck and burst into tears. Sweet, sweet, sweet, were the moments of their supreme bliss.



CHAPTER XXI

THE SHADOW OF THE GOLDEN DOG

Two old marquises sat together in a parlour in Paris.

"Bring us the best wine in the house," exclaimed one of them, a bronzed and dried soldier in a maroon coat, waving his hand to his lackey, who responded and disappeared.

"Nothing," continued the soldier, turning to his friend, "could be too good for my schoolmate Lotbiniere. Here are two chairs worthy of us, generals among this spindle-shanked regiment. Sit down in that one while I draw up here opposite. Throw off the wigs; there. We shall see now how much of each other remains after our long parting. In India I never wore a wig except to receive the Maharajah."

"Excellent, Pierre! There goes mine. Let us sit back and talk ourselves into the good old days when you and I were youngsters."

"And a French king ruled Canada."

"And the French regiments marched its soil. Do you remember the hot morning we stood hand in hand watching the Royal Rousillons wheel into the Place d'Armes in front of the church?"

"How old were we then?"

"I was eleven; it was my birthday. Don't you remember?"

The wine came in and was set on a little table. The first speaker opened a bottle and poured out two glasses.

Pierre le Gardeur, Knight of St. Louis, Brigadier-General, Governor of Mahe and Marquis de Repentigny—for this was he—was a tall, spare man whose complexion the suns of the tropics had browned, whose hair was whitened with foreign service, and whose blue eyes and sensitive, handsome features wore a strange, settled look of melancholy. Evidently some long-standing sorrow threw its shadow over his spirit.

His friend, the Marquis de Lotbiniere, was a person of much more worldly aspect, of largish build and beginning to incline to flesh, but whose dark eyes were steady with the air of business capability and self-possession. The care and finish of his dress and manner showed pronounced pride of rank—a kind of well-regulated ostentation. His family were descended from the best of the half-dozen petty gentry in the rude, early days of the colony of his origin. He had by his ability become engineer-in-chief under Montcalm. Yet from the point of view of the Versailles nobility—the standard he himself was most ambitious to apply—he was but an obscure colonel, and his title a questionable affair. He acquired it in this wise.

At the fall of New France the last French Governor, Vaudreuil, passed over to Europe and sold out his Canadian properties. De Lotbiniere, who remained, bought them for a song, including the chateau in Montreal and several large seigniories, chiefly wild lands, but growing in value. In the original grant of one of them to the Marquis de Vaudreuil, he found that it had been intended as a Canadian marquisate, an honorary appellation, however, which the Vaudreuils never pursued any further. This lapsed marquisate of the former proprietors gave Lotbiniere his idea; proprietor of a marquisate, he ought to be a marquis. He determined to find some way of procuring the title for himself. He visited Paris as much and long as possible, and, by various devices, kept his name and services before the War Office. During the American Revolution he conceived the project of secretly negotiating with the Revolutionists for the re-transfer of Canada to the French. He persuaded the War Office to permit him to try his hand in the matter without publicly compromising Versailles, and received, on pressing his request, an equivocal grant of the coveted title, to be attached to his Canadian seigniory, but only if held of the Crown of France, and not of any foreign power. His secret negotiations at Washington failed and were never heard of. He nevertheless called himself Marquis.

The two gentlemen were united by relationship, for besides the inextricable genealogical links which bound together the chief families of the colony, each had espoused a daughter of the Chevalier Chaussegros de Lery, king's engineer, an excellent gentleman, who, like de Lotbiniere, had returned to Canada after its cession and become a subject, a truly loyal one, of the English Crown.

"I expect our good nephew, Louis de Lery, here in a few minutes," said Repentigny. "He is in the Bodyguard, his father wrote."

"Yes, the company de Villeroy—a fine position."

"I wonder what the boy is like. Has he grown up tall like the de Lerys?"

"Yes, he does them credit, is very distinguished looking, with an air which does not allow everybody to be familiar. Some call Louis cold, but we noblesse ought to have a little of that."

"No, no, Lotbiniere, none of it to white men. Not even to blacks and coolies, but certainly none of it to white men."

"You speak from India where all French naturally are high-caste."

A look of pain came over Repentigny's features.

"No, Michel, that is not the reason. Alas! I once despised a man of lower degree. My God, how could I do it again!" And his head dropped upon his breast in profound dejection.

Lotbiniere started and paused, looking at him with great sympathy, a cruel old remembrance awaking.

"By the curse of heaven, I have never forgotten it," continued the other.

"Stay, stay," said Lotbiniere, leaning over and softly laying a hand on his arm, "you were blameless; young blood was not to be controlled."

"It haunts me for ever," Repentigny went on; "in my wanderings all around the world I see the blood of poor Philibert. I see again that steep street of old Quebec. I hold again in my hand the requisition for his rooms. I see the anger on his face, high-spirited citizen that he was, that I should choose me out the best in his house and treat its master as I did. I feel again my inconsiderate arrogance swelling my veins. I hear his merited reproaches and maledictions. Rage and evil pride overpower me, I draw and lunge. Alas! the flood of life-blood rushes up the blade and warms my hand here, here."

"Calm yourself."

"He follows me."

"Nonsense, Pierre. No one is present," exclaimed Lotbiniere in a tone of decision.

"Philibert's son. I met him in Quebec before I fled to France. I met him in Paris before I fled to the East. I met him in Pondicherry. He settled near me in Mahe. Now he is in Paris again. It is dreadful to be reminded of your crime by an avenger. My death, when it comes, will be by his hand, Michel."

"Have no fear. In twenty hours we can have him safe in a place whence such as he never come out."

"That would be more terrible still. Shall I further wrong the wronged? God would be against me as well as remorse. No, when he strikes it will be just. I do not fear his sword, but the memory of his father's blood, and that would grow redder on my hand if I injured the son. Oh, Michel, is the Golden Dog still over the door of Philibert's house in Quebec?"

"Yes, Pierre; forget these things. Take a glass of wine."

"I remember its inscription"—

"I am a dog gnawing a bone: In gnawing it I take my repose. A day will come which has not come, When I will bite him who bit me."

"Philibert, the son, has cut the same on his house at Mahe."

"There, there, we must be bright when young Louis comes."

"With you too, good Michel, I should be brighter. Well, I have spoken of my sorrow for the first time in years, and now I feel freer. Yes, the wine is good, better than any they ship to India."

Repentigny and Lotbiniere had just begun to regain their composure when Louis de Lery entered.

He wore the uniform of the Gardes-du-Corps, the same as Germain's company, except that his cross-belt, instead of being of pale blue silk was of green, the distinguishing mark of the company of Villeroy, of which he was a private. But then it must be remembered that with his commission of private in the Bodyguard went the rank and prerogatives of a lieutenant of cavalry.

On crossing the threshold he stood poised perfectly, and and bowed a bow which was a masterpiece. His greetings, though so painfully accurate, were obviously cordial, and after the first were over he smiled and said—

"I now, sir, do myself the additional honour of presenting to you my felicitations upon the happy event which has doubtless brought you to Paris."

"Dear nephew, it is the serious state of our possessions in India, owing to the advances of the English there, that brings me to France. Perhaps I misunderstand."

"I mean, sir, the addition to our family alliances of a Montmorency."

"Indeed, I am unaware of such a distinction. Pray inform me. I have so lately arrived."

"Is it so lately, sir, that you have not heard of the forthcoming marriage of your son, my cousin, with Madame the Baroness de la Roche Vernay? Pardon, if you please, my surprise."

"Still more mysterious to me! Of a certainty, my son Charles, your cousin, is at this moment with his vessel and the Biscay fleet off the coast of Portugal. I do not understand the chance which can have brought him to Paris, however much I desire it, nor his alliance to any one here, for I saw him in person three weeks ago at Lisbon, where he never made the slightest reference to any such matter. There is some mistake, I am certain."

"Is he not the only Chevalier de Repentigny?"

"There, can be but one of the name. It is rare."

"Has he not been lately appointed to a lieutenancy in the King's Bodyguard, company of Noailles?"

"Impossible. I left him captain of the ship La Minerve. He has not, I regret to say, the influence to become an officer of the Bodyguard."

"This is something strange," remarked the Marquis de Lotbiniere. "Did you inquire who this officer was? Suppose, Repentigny, he should be some distant relative of yours: he might be an addition to our influence at Court. An officer of the Bodyguard, if we can claim him as a relative, would be better than any alliance we possess, except Vaudreuil, who does nothing for us."

"There can be no harm in Louis making inquiries."

"I will call upon him. Trust me to find some connection and make use of it."

"Are you still the marvel you were at genealogies, Michel!"

"Genealogy is a power. Louis, I am interested in this new relative. Can you tell us more about him? Do you know his Province?"

"He is said to be a Canadian."

"A Canadian! Does he say so himself?"

"So report goes."

"Astonishing. How could any Canadian but de Vaudreuil—who owes it to his exceptional gifts—acquire such influence?"

"They say this Sieur de Repentigny is extraordinarily handsome and agreeable."

"But his name! There are so few Canadian families, you can almost count them on your fingers—Fleurys, Bleurys, de Lerys, de Lanaudieres, le Gardeurs, le Moynes, Beaujeus, Lotbinieres, la Cornes, Salaberrys, and so forth. Can he be of these? He is not a le Gardeur, who alone in Canada could have a right to the appellation 'Repentigny.' Have you heard his family name?"

"He calls himself 'Le Cour de Repentigny.'"

The Marquis quitted his tone of alert judicial inquiry, and thundered out, like a criminal prosecutor—

"Heavens, I have it!"

"What, Uncle."

"He is an impostor. No Canadian named Lecour can be what he pretends—nay, not even a petty gentleman, for I know the whole list by heart to its obscurest members. No Lecour whatever is on it. Who of that name is at Repentigny? Only the merchant of St. Elphege, my old protege. Can it be any of his people! What is the appearance of this fellow?"

"He is about middle height, cheerful, graceful, hair and eyes black."

"It is that well-looking boy of Lecour's—no other. His father would kill himself if he heard of his son duping the highest circles of Versailles. Poor man, he was the least of the very least when I knew him first—a private in my corps. I made him keeper of the canteen. How can the son of such a one be more than a 'pea-soup.' What insolence and folly! He shall learn that this kind of rascality is not permitted by the nobles of France. Beast! animal!"

"See that you make no mistake, Michel. If he is only some foolish young Canadian, would not a private monition be well?" said Repentigny.

"There is no mistake," answered Lotbiniere, decidedly. "As for lenient dealings, do you think that is the way to keep down the lower classes? The strong hand and the severe example are the only guarantees of social order."

The irate Marquis rose from his chair and paced the room.

"Villain! The thought of him drives me beyond myself."

De Lery said little, but noted every word of his uncle's statement, and it slowly took shape in his mind in a steel-cold deadly contempt for Lecour.

The true Repentigny alone, his nature long purified of pride, felt no malice nor indignation against this usurper of his name.



CHAPTER XXII

THE SECRET OUT

Louis Rene Chaussegros de Lery, that model of blue-blooded elegance, was not the person to encourage any plebeian in basking in the smiles of aristocratic society. There was an inflexible honour in him, as well as pride, which was desperately shocked by the contrivings of Lecour. He therefore detailed the story, without any heat but without any mercy, to the mess-table of the company of Villeroy.

Two or three mornings later, Dominique came into Germain's sitting chamber at Troyes and taking up his Master's service sword looked closely at it as if to examine the polish on the goldwork. Such was his custom when he had something special to say. Dominique's pieces of information were invariably valuable. Germain therefore looked up from the comedy he was reading and gave attention. Dominique related briefly the rumour just come from Chalons: A Guardsman of the Noailles had related it to a comrade in the presence of his servant, and the servant had hurried to communicate it, with many questions, to Dominique.

Germain paled, yet only for an instant. He laughed at the Auvergnat, who snorted apologetically—

"As if Monsieur looked like a pedlar!"

"This is a righteous punishment for being born far away, Dominique," he exclaimed; "all colonials must be either mulattoes or cheats; the next time I am born it shall be in Chalons."

There was no parade that day on account of a fete.

He dressed himself in exactly as leisurely fashion as he had previously intended and ordered a hack-horse to take him to Versailles. So far he was acting; the world and Dominique his imaginary audience.

Only when he got out of Troyes and, having left the beautiful old Gothic-cathedralled town some distance behind, was speeding along the high-road, did he, for the first time, feel himself sufficiently alone to face his thoughts. With a great rush of vision he seemed to see the whole world of mankind rising against him—in its centre the form and face of a scornful courtier—the Repentigny, withering his pretensions by one contemptuous glance, to the applause of the Oeil de Boeuf. He saw the look of Madame l'Etiquette, the ribaldry of acquaintances at Versailles, the studious oblivion of the Princess de Poix, d'Estaing, Bellecour, and even Grancey; the mess-table derisive over the career of the pseudo-noble; Major Collinot striking his name from the list of the company; his arrest by Guardsmen disgusted at having to touch him; the stony visages of the court-martial; the Bastille; the oar and chain of the galleys. Truly they made no pleasant fate. Behind these, a white figure, veiled in a mist of tears, at whose face he dared not look—deceived by her knight, contaminated by his disgrace, her vision of honour shattered, heart-broken, desolate, forbidden to him for ever by the law which changeth not, of outraged caste.

"Alas! that it all should lead to such an end," he murmured.

By evening he was in Paris, and mechanically went to his old lodgings where he tried to compose himself. A supper was brought which he left unnoticed on the table. From time to time he would rise and walk about the room, feverishly revolving events and fears.

"And these people," he exclaimed, "will dare to say that I am of a lower nature than they. In what am I not noble? in what not their equal? Have they not, for an entire year, approved of me, deferred to me, imitated me? What is this miserable noblesse? Have I not seen that it is the greatest boors that have the most claim to it. If it consists in antiquity, where are the ancient gentry?—a remnant of pauper ploughmen rotting on their driblets of land. If it lies in title, what is so divine in the rewarded panderers to some unclean King? If it is genealogy and parchments, with what mutual truth do they not sneer away, and tell their tales upon, each other's lying pedigrees? In what sense am I less well-made, less brave, nay, less truthful, than that cringing rout at Versailles? Yes, all of you! the unbreakable word of my old father encloses more real nobility than the entirety of your asinine struts and proclamations? We shall see, too, whether noblesse is necessary to courage, for here and now I defy you all and all your powers!"