I was disappointed in the interview that I had with Mlle. d'Arency in the gardens of the Tuileries, the next day. I saw her for only a few minutes, and then within sight of other of Catherine's ladies. Although I lost nothing of the ground I had taken, neither did I gain anything further. Afterward, at court receptions andfêtes, and, sometimes, in the palace galleries, when she was off duty, I contrived to meet her. She neither gave me opportunities nor avoided me. All the progress that I made was in the measure of my infatuation for her. When I begged for a meeting at which we might not be surrounded by half the court, she smiled, and found some reason to prevent any such interview in the near future. So, if I had carried things very far at our first meeting in the Louvre, I now paid for my exceptional fortune by my inability to carry them a step further.
Thus matters went for several days, during which the assertion of De Rilly was proven true,—that my duties as a member of the French Guards would leave me some time for pleasure. Thanks to De Quelus, and to his enemy, Bussy d'Amboise, I made acquaintances both in the King's following and in that of the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou. De Rilly made me known to many who belonged to neither camp, and were none the worse for that. Our company lodged in the Faubourg St. Honore, but I led the life of a gentleman of pleasure, when off duty, and, as such, I had a private lodging within the town, near the Louvre, more pretentious than the whitewashed chamber in the Rue St. Denis. I drank often in cabarets, became something of a swaggerer, and something of a fop,—though never descending to the womanishness of the King's minions,—and did not allow my great love affair, which I never mentioned save in terms of mystery, to hinder me from the enjoyment of lesser amours of transient duration. At this time everybody was talking of the feud between the King's favorites and the followers of the Duke of Anjou. The King's minions openly ridiculed Anjou for his ungainliness, which was all the greater for his look of settled discontent and resentment. His faithful and pugnacious Bussy retaliated by having his pages dress like the King's minions,—with doublets of cloth of gold, stiff ruffs, and great plumes,—and so attend him at the Twelfth Dayfêtes. The minions, in their turn, sought revenge on Bussy by attacking him, on the following night, while he was returning from the Louvre to his lodgings. He eluded them, and the next morning he accused M. de Grammont of having led the ambuscade. De Quelus then proposed that all the King's gentlemen should meet all those of the Duke in a grand encounter to the death. The Duke's followers gladly accepted the challenge. Three hundred men on each side would have fought, had not the King resolutely forbidden the duel. De Quelus, that night, led a number of gentlemen in an attack on Bussy's lodgings. Bussy and his followers made a stout resistance, the tumult becoming so great that the Marechal de Montmorency called out the Scotch Guard to clear the street in front of Bussy's house; and it was time. Several gentlemen and servants were lying in their blood; and some of these died of their wounds.
It was openly known, about the court, that the Duke of Anjou held the King to be privy to these attacks on Bussy, and was frightfully enraged thereby; and that the King, in constant fear of the Duke's departure to join the Huguenots,—which event would show the King's inability to prevent sedition even in the royal family, and would give the Guise party another pretext to complain of his incompetence,—would forcibly obstruct the Duke's going.
It was this state of affairs that made Catherine de Medici again take up her abode in the Louvre, that she might be on the ground in the event of a family outbreak, which was little less probable to occur at night than in the daytime. She had lately lived part of the time in her new palace of the Tuileries, and part of the time in her Hotel des Filles Repenties, holding her council in either of these places, and going to the Louvre daily for the signature of the King to the documents of her own fabrication. At this time, Mlle. d'Arency was one of the ladies of the Queen-mother's bedchamber, and so slept in the Louvre. What should I be but such a fool as, when off duty, to pass certain hours of the night in gazing up at the window of my lady's chamber, as if I were a lover in an Italian novel! Again I must beg you to remember that I was only twenty-one, and full of the most fantastic ideas. I had undertaken an epic love affair, and I would omit none of the picturesque details that example warranted.
Going, one evening in February, to take up my post opposite the Louvre, I suddenly encountered a gentleman attended by two valets with torches. I recognized him as De Noyard, who had twice or thrice seen me about the palaces, but had never spoken to me. I was therefore surprised when, on this occasion, he stopped and said to me, in a low and polite tone:
"Monsieur, I have seen you, once or twice, talking with M. Bussy d'Amboise, and I believe that, if you are not one of his intimates, you, at least, wish him no harm."
"You are right, monsieur," I said, quite mystified.
"I am no friend of his," continued M. de Noyard, in his cold, dispassionate tone, "but he is a brave man, who fights openly, and, so far, he is to be commended. I believe he will soon return from the Tuileries, where he has been exercising one of the horses of the Duke of Anjou. I have just come from there myself. On the way, I espied, without seeming to see them, a number of the gentlemen of the King waiting behind the pillars of the house with a colonnade, near the Porte St. Honore."
"One can guess what that means."
"So I thought. As for me, I have more important matters in view than interfering with the quarrels of young hot-heads; but I think that there is yet time for Bussy d'Amboise to be warned, before he starts to return from the Tuileries."
"M. de Noyard, I thank you," I said, with a bow of genuine respect, and in a moment I was hastening along the Rue St. Honore.
I understood, of course, the real reasons why De Noyard himself had not gone back to warn Bussy. Firstly, those in ambush would probably have noticed his turning back, suspected his purpose, and taken means to defeat it. Secondly, he was a man from whom Bussy would have accepted neither warning nor assistance; yet he was not pleased that any brave man should be taken by surprise, and he gave me credit for a similar feeling. I could not but like him, despite my hidden suspicion that there was something between Mlle. d'Arency and him.
I approached the house with the colonnade, feigning carelessness, as if I were returning to my military quarters in the faubourg. The Porte St. Honore was still open, although the time set for its closing was past.
Suddenly a mounted figure appeared in the gateway, which, notwithstanding the dusk, I knew, by the way the rider sat his horse, to be that of Bussy. I was too late to warn him; I could only give my aid.
Three figures rushed out from beneath the supported upper story of the house, and made for Bussy with drawn swords. With a loud oath he reined back his horse on its haunches, and drew his own weapon, with which he swept aside the two points presented at him from the left. One of the three assailants had planted himself in front of the horse, to catch its bridle, but saw himself now threatened by Bussy's sword, which moved with the swiftness of lightning. This man thereupon fell back, but stood ready to obstruct the forward movement of the horse, while one of the other two ran around to Bussy's right, so that the rider might be attacked, simultaneously on both sides.
This much I had time to see before drawing my sword and running up to attack the man on the horseman's left, whom I suddenly recognized as De Quelus. At the same instant I had a vague impression of a fourth swordsman rushing out from the colonnade, and, before I could attain my object, I felt a heavy blow at the base of my skull, which seemed almost to separate my head from my neck, and I fell forward, into darkness and oblivion.
I suppose that the man, running to intercept me, had found a thrust less practicable than a blow with the hilt of a dagger.
When I again knew that I was alive, I turned over and sat up. Several men—bourgeois, vagabonds, menials, and such—were standing around, looking down at me and talking of the affray. I looked for Bussy and De Quelus, but did not see either. At a little distance away was another group, and people walked from that group to mine, andvice versa.
"Where is M. Bussy?" I asked.
"Oho, this one is all right!" cried one, who might have been a clerk or a student; "he asks questions. You wish to know about Bussy, eh? You ought to have seen him gallop from the field without a scratch, while his enemies pulled themselves together and took to their heels."
"What is that, over there?" I inquired, rising to my feet, and discovering that I was not badly hurt.
"A dead man who was as much alive as any of us before he ran to help M. Bussy. It is always the outside man who gets the worst of it, merely for trying to be useful. There come the soldiers of the watch, after the fight is over."
I walked over to the other group and knelt by the body on the ground. It was that of a gentleman whom I had sometimes seen in Bussy's company. He was indeed dead. The blood was already thickening about the hole that a sword had made in his doublet.
The next day the whole court was talking of the wrath of the Duke of Anjou at this assault upon his first gentleman-in-waiting. I was ashamed of having profited by the influence of De Quelus, who, I found, had not recognized me on the previous evening. Anjou's rage continued deep. He showed it by absenting himself from the wedding of Saint-Luc, one of De Quelus's companions in the King's favor and in the attack on Bussy. Catherine, knowing how the King's authority was weakened by the squabbles between him and his brother, took the Duke out to Vincennes for a walk in the park and a dinner at the château, that his temper might cool. She persuaded him to show a conciliatory spirit and attend the marriage ball to be held that night in the great hall of the Louvre. This was more than she could persuade Marguerite to do, who accompanied mother and son to Vincennes, sharing the feelings of the Duke for three reasons,—her love for him, her hatred for her brother, the King, and her friendship for Bussy d'Amboise. It would have been well had the Duke been, like his sister, proof against his mother's persuasion. For, when he arrived at the ball, he was received by the King's gentlemen with derisive looks, and one of them, smiling insolently in the Duke's piggish, pockmarked face, said, "Doubtless you have come so late because the night is most favorable to your appearance."
Suppose yourself in the Duke's place, and imagine his resentment. He turned white and left the ball. Catherine must have had to use her utmost powers to keep peace in the royal family the next day.
On the second morning after the ball, I heard, from De Rilly, that the King had put his brother under arrest, and kept him guarded in the Duke's own apartment, lest he should leave Paris and lead the rebellion which the King had to fear, not only on its own account, but because of the further disrepute into which it would bring him with his people. The King, doubtless, soon saw, or was made to see, that this conduct towards his brother—who had many supporters in France and was then affianced to Queen Elizabeth of England—would earn only condemnation; for, on the day after the arrest, he caused the court to assemble in Catherine's apartments, and there De Quelus went ironically through the form of an apology to the Duke, and a reconciliation with Bussy. The exaggerated embrace which Bussy gave De Quelus made everybody laugh, and showed that this peace-making was not to be taken seriously. Soon after it, Bussy d'Amboise and several of his followers left Paris.
The next thing I saw, which had bearing on the difference between the King and Monsieur his brother, was the procession of penitents in which Monsieur accompanied the King through the streets, after the hollow reconciliation. I could scarcely convince myself that the sanctimonious-looking person, in coarse penitential robe, heading the procession through the mire and over the stones of Paris, from shrine to shrine, was the dainty King whom I had beheld in sumptuous raiment in the gallery of the Louvre. The Duke of Anjou, who wore ordinary attire, seemed to take to this mummery like a bear, ready to growl at any moment. His demeanor was all that the King's gentlemen could have needed as a subject for their quips and jokes.
Two evenings after this, I was drinking in the public room of an inn, near my lodgings in the town, when a young gentleman named Malerain, who, though not a Scot, was yet one of the Scotch bodyguard, sat down at my table to share a bottle with me.
"More amusement at the palace," he said to me. "To think that, any one of these nights, I may be compelled to use force against the person of the King's brother, and that some day he may be King! I wonder if he will then bear malice?"
"What is the new trouble at the Louvre?" I asked.
"It is only the old trouble. Monsieur has been muttering again, I suppose, and this, with the fact that Bussy d'Amboise keeps so quiet outside of Paris, has led the King to fear that Monsieur has planned to escape to the country. At least, it has been ordered that every member of the Duke's household, who does not have to attend at his retiring, must leave the palace at night; and Messieurs de l'Archant, De Losses, and the other captains, have received orders from the King that, if Monsieur attempts to go out after dark, he must be stopped. Suppose it becomes my duty to stop him? That will be pleasant, will it not? To make it worse, I am devoted to a certain damsel who is devoted to Queen Marguerite, who is devoted to Monsieur, her brother. And here I am inviting misfortune, too, by drinking wine on the first Friday in Lent. I ought to have followed the example of the King, who has been doing penance all day in the chapel of the Hôtel de Bourbon."
"Let us hope that the King will be rewarded for his penance by the submission of Monsieur. I, for one, hope that if Monsieur attempts to get away, he will run across some Scotchman of the Guard who will not scruple to impede a prince of France. For if he should lead a Huguenot army against the King, I, as one of the Guards, might be called on to oppose my fellow-Protestants."
"Oh, the Duke does not wish to join the Huguenots. All he desires is to go to the Netherlands, where a throne awaits him if he will do a little fighting for it."
"I fear he would rather revenge himself on the King for what he has had to endure at court."
Presently Malerain left to go on duty at the Louvre, and soon I followed, to take up my station in sight of the window where Mlle. d'Arency slept. The night, which had set in, was very dark, and gusts of cold wind came up from the Seine. The place where, in my infatuation and affectation, I kept my lover's watch, was quite deserted. The Louvre loomed up gigantic before me, the lights gleaming feebly in a few of its many windows, serving less to relieve its sombre aspect than to suggest unknown, and, perhaps, sinister doings within.
I laugh at myself now for having maintained those vigils by night beneath a court lady's window; but you will presently see that, but for this boyish folly, my body would have been sleeping in its grave these many years past, and I should have never come to my greatest happiness.
Suddenly my attention was attracted to another window than that on which I had fixed my gaze. This other window appertained to the apartments of the King's sister, Queen Marguerite, and what caused me to transfer my attention to it was the noise of its being opened. Then a head was thrust out of it,—the small and graceful head of Marguerite herself. She looked down at the moat beneath, and in either direction, and apparently saw no one, I being quite in shadow; then she drew her head in.
Immediately a rope was let down into the moat, whose dry bed was about five times a tall man's length below the window, which was on the second story. Out of the window came a man of rather squat figure, who let himself boldly and easily down the rope. As soon as he had reached the bed of the moat, he was followed out of the window and down the rope by a second man, who came bunglingly, as if in great trepidation. This person, in his haste, let go the rope before he was quite down, but landed on his feet. Then a third figure came out from the chamber and down the cable, whereupon Marguerite's head again appeared in the opening, and I could see the heads of two waiting-women behind her. But the Queen of Navarre manifestly had no intention of following the three men. These now clambered up the side of the moat, and the one who had been first down turned and waved her a silent adieu, which she returned with a graceful gesture of her partly bare arm. The three men then rapidly plunged into one of the abutting streets and were gone. All this time I stood inactive and unobserved.
Marguerite remained at the window to cast another look around. Suddenly, from out the darkness at the base of the Louvre, as if risen from the very earth at the bottom of the moat, sprang the figure of a man, who started toward the guard-house as if his life depended on his speed. Marguerite drew her head in at once with a movement of great alarm. An instant later the rope was drawn up and the window closed.
Two conjectures came into my head, one after the other, each in a flash. The one was that Marguerite had availed herself of the fraternal quarrel that occupied the King's attention to plan an escape to her husband, King Henri of Navarre, and that these three men had gone from a consultation in her apartments to further the project. The other conjecture was that they were but some of Monsieur's followers who had transgressed the new rule, requiring their departure from the palace at nightfall, and had taken this means of leaving to avoid discovery. If the former conjecture embodied the truth, my sympathies were with the plot; for it little pleased me that the wife of our Huguenot leader should remain at the French court, a constant subject of scandalous gossip. If the second guess was correct, I was glad of an opportunity to avert, even slight, trouble from the wilful but charming head of Marguerite. In either case, I might serve a beautiful woman, a queen, the wife of a Huguenot king. Certainly, if that man, paid spy or accidental interloper, should reach the guard-house with information that three men had left the Louvre by stealth, the three men might be overtaken and imprisoned, and great annoyance brought to Marguerite. All this occupied my mind but an instant. Before the man had taken ten steps, I was after him.
He heard me coming, looked around, saw my hand already upon my sword-hilt, and shouted, "The guard! Help!" I saw that, to avoid a disclosure, I must silence him speedily; yet I dared not kill him, for he might be somebody whose dead body found so near the palace would lead to endless investigations, and in the end involve Marguerite, for suppose that the King had set him to watch her? Therefore I called to him, "Stop and face me, or I will split you as we run!"
The man turned at once, as if already feeling my sword-point entering his back. Seeing that I had not even drawn that weapon, he, himself, drew a dagger and raised it to strike. But I was too quick and too long of arm for him. With my gloved fist I gave him a straight blow on the side of the chin, and he dropped like a felled tree, at the very moat's edge, over which I rolled him that he might recover in safety from the effects of the shock.
I knew that, when he should awake, he would not dare inform the guard, for the three men would then be far away, and he would have no evidence to support his story. He would only put himself in danger of having fabricated a false accusation against the King's sister.
I deemed it best to go from the vicinity of the Louvre at once, and I did so, with a last wistful look at the windows behind which Mlle. d'Arency might or might not be reposing. I did not reappear there until the next morning. The first person I then met was Malerain, who was coming from the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where he had been making up for previous neglect of devotions.
"Well," I said, as I stood before him, and twisted my up-shooting mustaches, in unconscious imitation of him, "I trust you found your quarter on duty last night an easy one. You must thank me for saving you some labor."
"What do you mean?" he asked, with a look of sudden interest.
"Nothing, only that you might have been called on to give chase to some flying bird or other, if I had not knocked down a rascal who was running to inform the guard."
"And you saw the bird fly?" he said, with increasing astonishment.
"From an opening in that great cage," I replied, looking towards the Louvre.
"Then I, for myself, am glad you knocked down the said rascal who would have made falçons of us to bring the bird down. But be more cautious. Suppose what you did should reach the ears of the King?"
"Why should the King concern himself?"
"Monsieur, is it possible that you don't know that the bird that flew from the Louvre last night was the Duke of Anjou?"
It was now my turn to stare in astonishment.
"But," I said, "what use for him to leave the palace? There would be the gates of Paris to pass."
"There is more than one way to cross the fortifications of Paris, especially when one has such an ally as Bussy d'Amboise, free, to arrange matters. Monsieur is at this moment certainly on his way to some stronghold of his own. The King is mad with rage. Queen Marguerite is looking innocent and astonished, but I'll wager she had a hand in this evasion. My friend, I am under obligations to you!"
"How?"
"Why, since Queen Marguerite undoubtedly rejoices at her favorite brother's escape, and you helped to make it good, she owes you gratitude. So do all her maids, who, naturally, share in her feelings and benefit by her joy. Now, that gratitude extends of course to your friends, of whom I am one. Therefore a good turn is due me from one of those maids in particular, and for that I am obliged to you!"
I laughed at this fantastic extension of a debt of gratitude. "Doubtless," I said; "but since neither Marguerite nor the maid knows anything about my share in the matter, I don't see how you are going to collect the debt."
Malerain said nothing, but there was already that in his mind which, absurd as it might seem at that time, was to save me when death should rise threateningly about me on every side. It is a world in which much comes from little.
I was somewhat agitated at realizing that I had been the means of aiding an escape which might result in opposing the troops of the King to those of certain Huguenot leaders; but this thought was suddenly driven from my mind by a sight which caused me to leave Malerain abruptly, and make for one of the streets that led from the Louvre to the midst of the town.
It was Mlle. d'Arency, mounted on a plumed horse, with tassellated trappings, which was led by a young equerry who wore Catherine's colors, and followed by two mounted lackeys in similar livery. Beside her rode the stout, elderly woman who usually attended her. Mlle. d'Arency wore a mask of black velvet, but that could not conceal her identity from eyes to which every line of her pretty head, every motion of her graceful person, had become familiar in actual contemplation and in dreams. Her cloak and gown were, alike, of embroidered velvet of the color of red wine, as was the velvet toque which sat perched on her dark brown hair.
I followed her at some distance, resolved to find an opportunity for a seemingly accidental meeting. I supposed that she was going to visit some of the shops,—perhaps for the Queen-mother, perhaps for herself.
She led me on and on, until I began to wonder what could be her destination. She avoided the streets of fine shops, such as were patronized by the court, skirted market-places, and continued, in a general easterly direction, until she had crossed both the Rue St. Denis and the Rue St. Martin. At last, turning out of the Rue St. Antoine, she reached, by a little street lined with bakeries, a quiet square before a small church, of which I never even learned the name. She and the stout woman dismounted, and entered the church, leaving her male attendants outside with the horse.
"Oho," I mused, stopping at the door of a pastry-cook's at the place where the little street joined the square; "she chooses an obscure place for her devotions. Evidently she prefers to mingle solitude with them, so I must not disturb her."
I decided, therefore, to wait at the pastry-cook's till she should come out, and then to encounter her as if by chance. I would have, at least, a word in payment for having come so far afoot.
The pastry-cook must have been convinced of two things before Mlle. d'Arency came out of church: first, that his fortune was made if this new customer, myself, should only continue to patronize him; second, that there existed, at least, one human stomach able to withstand unlimited quantities of his wares.
I stood back in the shop, devouring one doughy invention after another, with my ear alert for the sound of her horse's hoofs on the stones. At last it occurred to me that she might have left the square by some other street. I made for the door of the shop to look. As I did so, a man rapidly passed the shop, going from the square towards the Rue St. Antoine. Was not that figure known to me? I hastened to the street. My first glance was towards the church. There stood her horse, and her three attendants were walking up and down in the sunlight. Then I looked after the man; I thought that the figure looked like that of De Noyard.
He disappeared into the Rue St. Antoine, having given me no opportunity to see his face. I would have followed, to make sure, roused into an intolerable jealousy at the idea of a secret meeting between Mlle. d'Arency and him, but that I now heard the full melodious voice of the lady herself. Looking around, I saw her on the steps of the church, with her middle-aged companion. At that instant her eyes met mine.
I advanced, with an exaggerated bow, sweeping the stones of the street with the plumes of my hat.
"So it is true!" I said, making no effort to control my agitation, and restraining my voice only that the lackeys might not hear; "you love that man!"
She looked at me steadily for a moment, and then said, "Do you mean M. de Noyard?"
"Ah, you admit it!"
"I admit nothing. But if I did love him, what right would you have to call me to account?"
"The right of a man who adores you, mademoiselle."
"That is no right at all. A man's right concerning a woman must be derived from her own actions. But come inside the church, monsieur."
She made a gesture to her attendants, and reentered the church. I followed her. We stood together before the font in the dim light.
"And now," she continued, facing me, "suppose I grant that I have so acted as to give you a right to question me; what then? Is it my fault that you have followed me this morning? Is it, then, any more my fault that I have been followed, also, by M. de Noyard?"
"But he must have been here before you."
"What does that prove? A score of people in the Louvre knew yesterday that I was coming to this church to-day."
"But so deserted a church,—so out of the way! Who would come here from the Louvre but for a tryst?"
She smiled, indulgently. "Can a thing have no cause except the obvious one?" she said. "I visit this church once every month, because, obscure though it be, it is associated with certain events in the history of my ancestors."
"But," I went on, though beginning to feel relieved, "if M. de Noyard was thrusting his presence on you, why did he leave before you did?"
"Probably because he knew that I would not leave the church while he remained to press his company upon me outside."
The low tones that we had to use, on account of our surroundings, gave our conversation an air of confidence and secrecy that was delicious to me; and now her voice fell even lower, when she added:
"I take the pains to explain these things to you, monsieur, because I do not wish you to think that I have intrigues;" and she regarded me fixedly with her large gray eyes, which in the dimness of the place were darker and more lustrous than usual.
Delightfully thrilled at this, I made to take her hand and stoop to kiss it, but stopped for a last doubt.
"Mademoiselle," I said, "I think you only the most adorable woman in the world. But there is one thing which has cost me many a sleepless hour, many a jealous surmise. If I could be reassured as to the nature of your errand that night when I first saw you—"
"Oh!" she laughed, "I was coming from an astrologer's."
"But you were not coming from the direction of Ruggieri's house."
"There are many astrologers in Paris, besides Ruggieri. Although the Queen-mother relies implicitly on him, one may sometimes get a more pleasing prediction from another; or, another may be clear on a point on which he is vague."
"But the hour—"
"I took the time when I was not on duty, and he kept me late. It was for a friend that I visited the astrologer,—a friend who was required in the palace all that evening. The astrologer had to be consulted that night, as my friend wished to be guided in a course that she would have to take the next morning. Now, Monsieur Curiosity, are you satisfied?"
This time I took her hand and pressed my lips upon it.
She was silent for a moment, noting the look of admiration on my face.Then, quickly, and in little more than a whisper, she said:
"I have answered your questions, though not admitting your right to ask them. Would you know how to gain that right?"
"Tell me!" I said, my heart beating rapidly with elation.
"Challenge M. de Noyard, and kill him!"
I stared in astonishment.
"Now you may know whether or not I love him," she added.
"But, mademoiselle,—why—"
"Ah, that is the one thing about which I must always refuse to be questioned! I ask you this service. Will you grant it?"
"If he has given you offence," I said, "certainly I will seek him at once."
"Not a word of me is to be said between you! He must not know that I have spoken to you."
"But a man is not to be killed without reason."
"A pretext is easily invented."
"Certainly,—a pretext to hide the cause of a quarrel from the world. But the real cause ought to be known to both antagonists."
"I shall not discuss what ought or ought not to be. I ask you, will you fight this man and try to kill him? I request nothing unusual,—men are killed every day in duels. You are a good swordsman; Bussy d'Amboise himself has said so. Come! will you do this?" She looked up at me with a slight frown of repressed petulance.
"If you will assure me that he has affronted you, and permit me to let him know, privately, the cause of my quarrel."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, with irritation, "must a lady give a hundred reasons when she requests a service of a gentleman?"
"One sufficient reason, when it is a service like this."
"Well, I shall give none. I desire his death,—few gentlemen would ask a further reason."
"I had not thought you so cruel, mademoiselle, as to desire the death of any man."
"God forbid that I should desire the death of any other man! So, monsieur, I must understand that you refuse to serve me in this?"
Her contemptuous look made me sigh. "Can you not see, mademoiselle, that to resolve deliberately and secretly on a man's death, and with premeditation to create a pretext for a challenge, is little better than assassination?"
"A fine excuse to avoid risking your life!"
Again I had to endure a look of profound scorn from her.
"Mademoiselle," I replied, patiently, "I would that you might see how ready I am to fight when an affront is given me or some one needs a defender."
"Oh!" she said, with an ironical smile. "Then to show yourself a lion against De Noyard, you require only that he shall affront you, or that some one shall need a defender against him! Suppose thatIshould ever be in such need?"
"You know that in your defence I would fight an army."
Her smile now lost its irony, and she assumed a look of conciliation, which I was both surprised and rejoiced to behold.
"Well, monsieur, it is pleasant to know that, if you will not take the offensive for me, you will, at least, act readily on the defensive if the occasion comes."
Much relieved at the turn the conversation had taken, I now undertook to continue it to my advantage. After some bantering, maintained with gaiety on her part, she said that she must return to the Louvre. Then, as she would not have me accompany her in the streets, I begged her to appoint another meeting. She evaded my petition at first, but, when I took her hand and refused to release it until she should grant my request, she said, after a little submissive shrug of her shoulders:
"Very well. Follow me, at a distance, from this church, and observe a house before which I shall stop for a moment as if to adjust my cloak. It is a house that has been taken by a friend of mine, one of the Queen-mother's ladies. I shall be there tomorrow afternoon."
"Alas! To-morrow I shall be on duty till six in the evening."
"Then come at seven. Knock three times on the street door." And with that she slipped her hand from mine, and hastened lightly out of the church. I stood alone by the font, delighted and bewildered. There was so much to mystify me that I did not even search my mind for explanations. I thought my happiness about to be attained, and left it for the future to explain,—as it did!
It was already dark when I started, on the evening appointed, for the house indicated by Mlle. d'Arency. I went without attendance, as was my custom, relying on my sword, my alertness of eye, and my nimbleness of foot. I had engaged a lackey, for whose honesty De Rilly had vouched, but he was now absent on a journey to La Tournoire, whither I had sent him with a message to my old steward. I have often wondered at the good fortune which preserved me from being waylaid, by thieving rascals, on my peregrinations, by night, through Paris streets. About this very time several gentlemen, who went well attended, were set upon and robbed almost within sight of the quarters of the provost's watch; and some of these lost their lives as well as the goods upon their persons. Yet I went fearlessly, and was never even threatened with attack.
On the way to the house, I reviewed, for the hundredth time, the conversation in the church. There were different conjectures to be made. Mlle. d'Arency may have made that surprising request merely to convince me that she did not love De Noyard, and intending, subsequently, to withdraw it; or it may have sprung from a caprice, a desire to ascertain how far I was at her bidding,—women have, thoughtlessly, set men such tasks from mere vanity, lacking the sympathy to feel how precious to its owner is any human life other than their own;—or she may have had some substantial reason to desire his death, something to gain by it, something to lose through his continuing to live. Perhaps she had encouraged his love and had given him a promise from which his death would be the means of release easiest to her,—for women will, sometimes, to secure the smallest immunity for themselves, allow the greatest calamities to others. This arises less from an active cruelty than from a lack of imagination, an inability to suppose themselves in the places of others. I soon felt the uselessness of searching, in my own mind, for the motive of Mlle. d'Arency's desire, or pretence of desire, for the death of De Noyard. What had passed between them I could not guess. So, after the manner of youth, I gave up the question, satisfied with knowing that I had before me an interview with a charming woman, and willing to wait for disclosures until events should offer them.
The street in which the house was situated was entirely dark and deserted when I stepped into it. The house was wider than its neighbors, and each of its upper stories had two chambers overlooking the street. At the window of one of these chambers, on the second story, a light shone. It was the only light visible in any of the houses, all of which frowned down menacingly; and hence it was like a beacon, a promise of cheer and warmth in the midst of this black, cold Paris.
I knocked three times on the street door, as she had directed me. Presently the wicket at the side of the door was opened, and a light was held up to it, that my face might be seen by a pair of eyes that peered out through the aperture. A moment later the bolts of the door were drawn, and I was let in by the possessor of the eyes. This was the elderly woman who always attended Mlle. d'Arency when the latter was abroad from the palace. She had invariably shown complete indifference to me, not appearing aware of my existence, and this time she said only:
"This way, monsieur."
Protecting the flame of her lamp with her hand, she led me forward to a narrow staircase and we ascended, stopping at a landing on which opened the second story chamber whose street window had shone with light. She gave three knocks at the door of this chamber. At the last knock, her lamp went out.
"Curse the wind!" she muttered.
So I stood with her, on the landing, in darkness, expecting the door in front of me to open, immediately, and admit me to the lighted chamber.
Suddenly I heard a piercing scream from within the chamber. It was the voice of Mlle. d'Arency.
"Help! Help!" she cried. "My God, he will kill me!"
This was followed by one long series of screams, and I could hear her running about the chamber as though she were fleeing from a pursuer.
I stood for an instant, startled.
"Good God!" cried the old woman at my elbow. "An assassin! Her enemies have planned it! Monsieur, save her life!"
And the dame began pounding on the door, as if to break into the room to assist her mistress.
I needed no more than this example. Discovering that the door was locked on the inside, and assuming that Mlle. d'Arency, in the flight which she maintained around the room, could not get an opportunity to draw the bolt, I threw my weight forward, and sent the door flying open on its hinges.
To my astonishment, the chamber was in complete darkness. Mlle. d'Arency had doubtless knocked the light over in her movements around the room.
She was still screaming at the top of her voice, and running from one side to another. The whiteness of the robe she wore made it possible to descry her in the absence of light.
I stood for a second, just inside the threshold, and drew my sword. At first, I could not see by whom or what she was threatened; but I heard heavy footsteps, as of some one following her in her wild course about the place. Then I made out, vaguely, the figure of a man.
"Fear not, mademoiselle!" I cried.
"Oh, monsieur!" she screamed. "Save me! Save my life!"
I thrust my sword at the figure of the man. An ejaculation of pain told me that it touched flesh. A second later, I heard a sword slide from its scabbard, and felt the wind of a wild thrust in my direction.
At this moment, Mlle d'Arency appeared between me and the street window of the room. There was enough light from the sky to enable her head and shoulders to stand out darkly against the space of the window. Her head was moving with the violent coming and going of her breath, and her shoulders were drawn up in an attitude of the greatest fright. Is it any wonder that I did not stop to ascertain who or what her assailant might be, or how he had come there? I could make out only that the man in the darkness was a large and heavy one, and wielded a swift blade. All other thoughts were lost in the immediate necessity of dealing with him. The extreme terror that she showed gave me a sense of his being a formidable antagonist; the prompt response that he had given to my own thrust showed that he was not to be quelled by a mere command. In fine, there was nothing to do but fight him as best I could in the blackness; and I was glad for so early an opportunity to show Mlle. d'Arency how ready I was to do battle for her when I found her threatened with danger.
From the absence of any sound or other demonstration, except what was made by Mlle. d'Arency and the man and myself, I knew that we three were the only ones in the room. The elderly woman had not entered with me,—a fact whose strangeness, in view of the great desire she had first evinced to reach her mistress's side, did not occur to me until afterward.
I made another thrust at the man, but, despite the darkness, he parried it with his sword; and a quick backward step was all that saved me from his prompt reply. Angered at having to give ground in the presence of the lady, I now attacked in turn, somewhat recklessly, but with such good luck as to drive him back almost to the window. Mlle. d'Arency gave another terrified scream when he came near her, and she ran past me towards the door of the apartment. Both my antagonist and myself were now beginning to have a clearer impression of each other's outlines, and there was sharp sword-work between us by the window. As we stood there, breathing rapidly with our exertion and excitement, I heard the door close through which I had entered. I knew from this that Mlle. d'Arency had left the chamber, and I was glad that she was out of danger. It was natural that she should close the door, instinct impelling her to put any possible barrier between her assailant and herself.
The man and myself were alone together to maintain the fight which, having once entered, and being roused to the mood of contest, I had no thought of discontinuing now that Mlle. d'Arency was out of immediate danger. It had reached a place at which it could be terminated only by the disarming, the death, or the disabling of one of us.
I gradually acquired the power of knowing all my opponent's movements, despite the darkness. I supposed that he was equipped with dagger as well as with sword, but as he made no move to draw the shorter weapon, I did not have recourse to mine. Though I would not take an advantage over him, even in the circumstances, yet I was not willing to be at a disadvantage. Therefore, as he was not encumbered with cloak or mantle, I employed a breathing moment to tear off my own cloak and throw it aside, not choosing to use it on my left arm as a shield unless he had been similarly guarded.
So we lunged and parried in the darkness, making no sound but by our heavy breathing and an occasional ejaculation and the tramping of our feet, the knocking of our bodies against unseen pieces of furniture, and the clashing of our blades when they met. Each of us fenced cautiously at times, and at times took chances recklessly.
Finally, in falling back, he came to a sudden stop against a table, and the collision disturbed for an instant his control over his body. In that instant I felt a soft resistance encounter my sword and yield to it. At once, with a feeling of revulsion, I drew my sword out of the casing that his flesh had provided, and stood back. Something wet and warm sprinkled my face. The man gave a low moan and staggered sideways over towards the window. Then he plunged forward on his face. I stooped beside him and turned him over on his back, wetting my gloves with the blood that gushed from his wound and soaked his doublet. At that moment a splash of moonlight appeared on the floor, taking the shape of the window. His head and shoulders lay in this illumined space. I sprang back in horror, crying out his name:
"De Noyard! My God, it is you!"
"Yes, monsieur," he gasped, "it is De Noyard. I have been trapped. I ought to have suspected."
"But I do not understand, monsieur. Surely you could not have attackedMlle. d'Arency?"
"Attacked her! I came here by her appointment!"
"But her cry for help?"
"It took me by complete surprise. There was a knock on the door—"
"Yes,—mine. I, too, came by her appointment!"
"Mademoiselle instantly put out the light and began to scream. I thought that the knock frightened her; then that she was mad. I followed to calm her. You entered; you know the rest."
"But what does it mean?"
"Can you not see?" he said, with growing faintness. "We have been tricked,—I, by her pretense of love and by this appointment, to my death; you, by a similar appointment and her screams, to make yourself my slayer. I ought to have known! she belongs to Catherine, to the Queen-mother. Alas, monsieur! easily fooled is he who loves a woman!"
Then I remembered what De Rilly had told me,—that De Noyard's counsels to the Duke of Guise were an obstacle to Catherine's design of conciliating that powerful leader, who aspired to the throne on which her son was seated.
"No, no, monsieur!" I cried, unwilling to admit Mlle. d'Arency capable of such a trick, or myself capable of being so duped. "It cannot be that; if they had desired your death, they would have hired assassins to waylay you."
Yet I knew that he was right. The strange request that Mlle. d'Arency had made of me in the church was now explained.
A kind of smile appeared, for a moment, on De Noyard's face, struggling with his expression of weakness and pain.
"Who would go to the expense of hiring assassins," he said, "when honest gentlemen can be tricked into doing the work for nothing? Moreover, when you hire assassins, you take the risk of their selling your secret to the enemy. They are apt to leave traces, too, and the secret instigator of a deed may defeat its object by being found out."
"Then I have to thank God that you are not dead. You will recover, monsieur."
"I fear not, my son. I do not know how much blood I lose at every word I speak.Parbleu! you have the art of making a mighty hole with that toy of yours, monsieur!"
This man, so grave and severe in the usual affairs of life, could take on a tone of pleasantry while enduring pain and facing death.
"Monsieur," I cried, in great distress, "you must not die. I will save you. I shall go for a surgeon. Oh, my God, monsieur, tell me what to do to save your life!"
"You will find my lackeys, two of them, at the cabaret at the next corner. It is closed, but knock hard and call for Jacques. Send him to me, and the other for a surgeon."
De Noyard was manifestly growing weaker, and he spoke with great difficulty. Not daring to trust to any knowledge of my own as to immediate or temporary treatment of his wound, I made the greatest haste to follow his directions. I ran out of the chamber, down the stairs, and out to the street, finding the doors neither locked nor barred, and meeting no human being. Mlle. d'Arency and her companion had silently disappeared.
I went, in my excitement, first to the wrong corner. Then, discovering my blunder, I retraced my steps, and at last secured admittance to the place where De Noyard's valets tarried.
To the man who opened the door, I said, "Are you Jacques, the serving-man of Monsieur de Noyard?"
"I am nobody's serving man," was the reply, in a tone of indignation; but a second man who had come to the door spoke up, "I am Jacques."
"Hallo, Monsieur de la Tournoire," came a voice from a group of men seated at a table. "Come and join us, and show my friends how you fellows of the French Guards can drink!"
It was De Rilly, very merry with wine.
"I cannot, De Rilly," I replied, stepping into the place. "I have very important business elsewhere." Then I turned to Jacques and said, quietly, "Go, at once, to your master, and send your comrade for a surgeon to follow you there. Do you know the house in which he is?"
The servant made no answer, but turned pale. "Come!" he said to another servant, who had joined him from an obscure corner of the place. The two immediately lighted torches and left, from which fact I inferred that Jacques knew where to find his master.
"What is all this mystery?" cried De Rilly, jovially, rising and coming over to me, while the man who had opened the door, and who was evidently the host, closed it and moved away. "Come, warm yourself with a bottle! Why, my friend, you are as white as a ghost, and you look as if you had been perspiring blood!"
"I must go, at once, De Rilly. It is a serious matter."
"Then hang me if I don't come, too!" he said, suddenly sobered, and he grasped his cloak and sword. "That is, unless I should bede trop."
"Come. I thank you," I said; and we left the place together.
"Whose blood is it?" asked De Rilly, as we hurried along the narrow street, back to the house.
"That of M. de Noyard."
"What? A duel?"
"A kind of duel,—a strange mistake!
"The devil! Won't the Queen-mother give thanks! And won't the Duke ofGuise be angry!"
"M. de Noyard is not dead yet. His wound may not be fatal."
I led the way into the house and up the steps to the apartment. It was now lighted up by the torch which Jacques had brought. De Noyard was still lying in the position in which he had been when I left him. The servant stood beside him, looking down at his face, and holding the torch so as to light up the features.
"How do you feel now, monsieur?" I asked, hastening forward.
There was no answer. The servant raised his eyes to me, and said, in a tone of unnatural calmness, "Do you not see that he is dead, M. de la Tournoire?"
Horror-stricken, I knelt beside the body. The heart no longer beat; the face was still,—the eyes stared between unquivering lids, in the light of the torch.
"Oh, my God! I have killed him!" I murmured.
"Come away. You can do nothing here," said De Rilly, quietly. He caught me by the shoulder, and led me out of the room.
"Let us leave this neighborhood as soon as possible," he said, as we descended the stairs. "It is most unfortunate that the valet knows your name. He heard me speak it at the tavern, and he will certainly recall also that I hailed you as one of the French Guards."
"Why is that unfortunate?" I asked, still deprived of thought by the horror of having killed so honorable a gentleman, who had not harmed me.
"Because he can let the Duke of Guise know exactly on whom to seek vengeance for the death of De Noyard."
"The Duke of Guise will seek vengeance?" I asked, mechanically, as we emerged from that fatal house, and turned our backs upon it.
"Assuredly. He will demand your immediate punishment. You must bespeak the King's pardon as soon as possible. That is necessary, to protect oneself, when one has killed one's antagonist in a duel. The edicts still forbid duels, and one may be made to pay for a victory with one's life, if the victim's friends demand the enforcement of the law,—as in this case the Duke of Guise surely will demand."
"M. de Quelus can, doubtless, get me the King's pardon," I said, turning my mind from the past to the future, from regret to apprehension. The necessity of considering my situation prevented me from contemplating, at that time, the perfidy of Mlle. d'Arency, the blindness with which I had let myself be deceived, or the tragic and humiliating termination of my great love affair.
"If M. de Quelus is with you, you are safe from the authorities. You will then have only to guard against assassination at the hands of Guise's followers."
"I shall go to M. de Quelus early in the morning," I said.
"By all means. And you will not go near your lodgings until you have assured your safety against arrest. You must reach the King before the Duke can see him; for the Duke will not fail to hint that, in killing De Noyard, you were the instrument of the King or of the Queen-mother. To disprove that, the King would have to promise the Duke to give you over to the authorities. And now that I think of it, you must make yourself safe before the Queen-mother learns of this affair, for she will advise the King to act in such a way that the Duke cannot accuse him of protecting you. My friend, it suddenly occurs to me that you have got into a rather deep hole!"
"De Rilly," I asked, with great concern, "do you think that I was the instrument of Catherine de Medici in this?"
"Certainly not!" was the emphatic answer. "The fight was about a woman, was it not?"
"A woman was the cause of it," I answered, with a heavy sigh. "But how do you know?"
"To tell the truth," he said, "many people have been amused to see you make soft eyes at a certain lady, and to see De Noyard do likewise. Neither young men like you, nor older men like him, can conceal these things."
Thus I saw that even De Rilly did not suspect the real truth, and this showed me how deep was the design of which I had been the tool. Everybody would lay the quarrel to rivalry in love. The presence of so manifest a cause would prevent people from hitting on the truth. Mlle. d'Arency had trusted to my youth, agility, and supposed skill to give me the victory in that fight in the dark; and then to circumstances to disclose who had done the deed. "It was De Noyard's jealous rival," everybody would say. Having found a sufficient motive, no one would take the trouble to seek the real source,—to trace the affair to the instigation of Catherine de Medici. The alert mind of De Rilly, it is true, divining the equally keen mind of the Duke of Guise, had predicted that Guise might pretend a belief in such instigation, and so force the King to avenge De Noyard, in self-vindication. Mlle. d'Arency well knew that I would not incriminate a woman, even a perfidious one, and counted also on my natural unwillingness to reveal myself as the dupe that I had been. Moreover, it would not be possible for me to tell the truth in such a way that it would appear probable. And what would I gain by telling the truth? The fact would remain that I was the slayer of De Noyard, and, by accusing the instigators, I would but compel them to demonstrate non-complicity; which they could do only by clamoring for my punishment. And how could I prove that things were not exactly as they had appeared,—that the woman's screams were not genuine: that she was not actually threatened by De Noyard? Clearly as I saw the truth, clearly as De Noyard had seen it in his last moments, it could never be established by evidence.
With bitter self-condemnation, and profound rancor against the woman whose tool I had been, I realized what an excellent instrument she had found for her purpose of ridding her mistress of an obstacle.
It was not certain that the King, himself, had been privy to his mother's design of causing De Noyard's death. In such matters she often acted without consulting him. Therefore, when De Quelus should present my case to him as merely that of a duel over a love affair, Henri would perhaps give me his assurances of safety, at once, and would hold himself bound in honor to stand by them. All depended on securing these before Catherine or the Duke of Guise should have an opportunity to influence him to another course.
I felt, as I walked along with De Rilly, that, if I should obtain immunity from the punishment prescribed by edict, I could rely on myself for protection against any private revenge that the Duke of Guise might plan.
De Rilly took me to a lodging in the Rue de L'Autruche, not far from my own, which was in the Rue St. Honore. Letting myself be commanded entirely by him, I went to bed, but not to sleep. I was anxious for morning to come, that I might be off to the Louvre. I lay speculating on the chances of my seeing De Quelus, and of his undertaking to obtain the King's protection for me. Though appalled at what I had done, I had no wish to die,—the youth in me cried for life; and the more I desired life, the more fearful I became of failing to get De Quelus's intercession.
I grew many years older in that night. In a single flash, I had beheld things hitherto unknown to me: the perfidy of which a woman was capable, the falseness of that self-confidence and vanity which may delude a man into thinking himself the conqueror of a woman's heart, the danger of going, carelessly, on in a suspicious matter without looking forward to possible consequences. I saw the folly of thoughtlessness, of blind self-confidence, of reckless trust in the honesty of others and the luck of oneself. I had learned the necessity of caution, of foresight, of suspicion; and perhaps I should have to pay for the lesson with my life.
Turning on the bed, watching the window for the dawn, giving in my mind a hundred different forms to the account with which I should make De Quelus acquainted with the matter, I passed the most of that night. At last, I fell asleep, and dreamt that I had told De Quelus my story, and he had brought me the King's pardon; again, that I was engaged in futile efforts to approach him; again, that De Noyard had come to life. When De Rilly awoke me, it was broad daylight.
I dressed, and so timed my movements as to reach the Louvre at the hour when De Quelus would be about to officiate at the King's rising. De Rilly left me at the gate, wishing me good fortune. He had to go to oversee the labors of some grooms in the King's stables. One of the guards of the gate sent De Quelus my message. I stood, in great suspense, awaiting the answer, fearing at every moment to see the Duke of Guise ride into the Place du Louvre on his way to crave an interview with the King.
At last a page came across the court with orders that I be admitted, and I was soon waiting in a gallery outside the apartments of the chamberlains. After a time that seemed very long, De Quelus came out to me, with a look of inquiry on his face.
Ignoring the speech I had prepared for the occasion, I broke abruptly into the matter.
"M. de Quelus," I said, "last night, in a sudden quarrel which arose out of a mistake, I was so unfortunate as to kill M. de Noyard. It was neither a duel nor a murder,—each of us seemed justified in attacking the other."
De Quelus did not seem displeased to hear of De Noyard's death.
"What evidence is there against you?" he asked.
"That of M. de Noyard's servant, to whom I acknowledged that I had killed his master. Other evidence may come up. What I have come to beg is your intercession with the King—"
"I understand," he said, without much interest. "I shall bring up the matter before the King leaves his bed."
"When may I expect to know?" I asked, not knowing whether to be reassured or alarmed at his indifference.
"Wait outside the King's apartments. I am going there now," he replied.
I followed him, saw him pass into the King's suite, and had another season of waiting. This was the longest and the most trying. I stood, now tapping the floor with my foot, now watching the halberdiers at the curtained door, while they glanced indifferently at me. Various officers of the court, whose duty or privilege it was to attend the King's rising, passed in, none heeding me or guessing that I waited there for the word on which my life depended. I examined the tapestry over and over again, noticing, particularly, the redoubtable expression of a horseman with lance in rest, and wondering how he had ever emerged from the tower behind him, of which the gateway was half his size.
A page came out of the doorway through which De Quelus had disappeared.Did he bring word to me? No. He glanced at me casually, and passed on,leaving the gallery at the other end. Presently he returned, precedingMarguerite, the Queen of Navarre, whom he had gone to summon.
"More trouble in the royal family," I said to myself. The King must have scented another plot, to have summoned his sister before the time for thepetite levée. I feared that this would hinder his consideration of my case.
Suddenly a tall figure, wearing a doublet of cloth of silver, gray velvet breeches, gray mantle, and gray silk stockings, strode rapidly through the gallery, and curtly commanded the usher to announce him. While awaiting the usher's return, he stood still, stroking now his light mustaches, and now his fine, curly blonde beard, which was little more than delicate down on his chin. As his glance roved over the gallery it fell for a moment on me, but he did not know me, and his splendid blue eyes turned quickly away. His face had a pride, a nobility, a subtlety that I never saw united in another. He was four inches more than six feet high, slender, and of perfect proportion, erect, commanding, and in the flower of youth. How I admired him, though my heart sank at the sight of him; for I knew he had come to demand my death! It was the Duke of Guise. Presently the curtains parted, he passed in, and they fell behind him.
And now my heart beat like a hammer on an anvil. Had De Quelus forgotten me?
Again the curtains parted. Marguerite came out, but this time entirely alone. As soon as she had passed the halberdiers, her eyes fell on me, but she gave no sign of recognition. When she came near me, she said, in a low tone, audible to me alone, and without seeming to be aware of my presence:
"Follow me. Make no sign,—your life depends on it!"
She passed on, and turned out of the gallery towards her own apartments. For a moment I stood motionless; then, with a kind of instinctive sense of what ought to be done, for all thought seemed paralyzed within me, I made as if to return to the chamberlains' apartments, from which I had come. Reaching the place where Marguerite's corridor turned off, I pretended for an instant to be at a loss which way to go; then I turned in the direction taken by Marguerite. If the halberdiers, at the entrance to the King's apartments, saw me do this, they could but think I had made a mistake, and it was not their duty to come after me. Should I seek to intrude whither I had no right of entrance, I should encounter guards to hinder me.
Marguerite had waited for me in the corridor, out of sight of the halberdiers.
"Quickly, monsieur!" she said, and glided rapidly on. She led me boldly to her own apartments and through two or three chambers, passing, on the way, guards, pages, and ladies in waiting, before whom I had the wit to assume the mien of one who was about to do some service for her, and had come to receive instructions. So my entrance seemed to pass as nothing remarkable. At last we entered a cabinet, where I was alone with her. She opened the door of a small closet.
"Monsieur," she said, "conceal yourself in this closet until I return. I am going to be present at thepetite levéeof the King. Do not stir, for they will soon be searching the palace, with orders for your arrest. Had you not come after me, at once, two of the Scotch Guards would have found you where you waited. I slipped out while they were listening to the orders that my mother added to the King's."
I fell on my knee, within the closet.
"Madame," I said, trembling with gratitude, "you are more than a queen.You are an angel of goodness."
"No; I am merely a woman who does not forget an obligation. I have heard, from one of my maids, who heard it from a friend of yours, how you knocked a too inquisitive person into the moat beneath my window. I had to burn the rope that was used that night, but I have since procured another, which may have to be put to a similar purpose!"
And, with a smile, she shut the closet door upon me.