The War of Women, Volume 1

by Alexandre Dumas

MADAME DE CONDÉ.

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I.

The room into which Canolles was ushered was a vast apartment, with hangings of sombre hue, and lighted by a single night-lamp upon a bracket between two windows; the feeble light which it cast was, however, sufficient to enable one to make out a large picture immediately above the lamp, representing a woman holding a child by the hand. At the four corners of the frame shone the three golden fleurs-de-lys, from which it was necessary only to take away the heart-shaped bend to make of them the three fleurs-de-lys of France. In the depths of a large alcove, which the light hardly reached at all, could be seen, beneath the heavy coverlid of a magnificent bed, the woman upon whom the name of the Baron de Canolles had produced so striking an effect.

The gentleman began once more to go through with the customary formalities; that is to say, he took the requisite three steps toward the bed, bowed, and took three steps more. Thereupon, two maids, who had doubtless been assisting to disrobe Madame de Condé, having withdrawn, the valet closed the door and Canolles was left alone with the princess.

It was not for Canolles to begin the conversation, and he waited until he should be spoken to; but as the princess seemed determined to maintain silence, the young officer concluded that it would be better for him to disregard the proprieties than to remain in such an embarrassing position. He was fully alive, however, to the fact that the storm portended by this disdainful silence would probably burst forth at the first words which should break it, and that he was about to be submerged by a second flood of princely wrath, even more to be feared than the first, in that this princess was younger and more interesting.

But the extreme nature of the insult put upon him of itself emboldened the young gentleman, and bowing a third time, in accordance with his feelings, that is to say, with stiff formality, indicative of the ill-humor which was brewing in his Gascon brain, he began:—

"Madame, I have had the honor to request, on behalf of her Majesty the queen regent, an audience of your Highness; your Highness has deigned to grant my request. Now, may I not beg that your Highness will crown your gracious reception by letting me know by a word, by a sign, that you are aware of my presence and are ready to listen to me?"

A movement behind the curtains and beneath the bed-clothes warned Canolles that he might expect a reply; and a moment later he heard a voice so choked with emotion as to be almost inaudible.

"Speak, monsieur," said the voice; "I am listening."

Canolles assumed an oratorical tone, and began:—

"Her Majesty the queen sends me to you, madame, to assure your Highness of her desire to continue upon friendly terms with you."

There was a very perceptible stir in the passage beside the bed, and the princess, interrupting the orator, said in a broken voice:—

"Monsieur, say no more of her Majesty the queen's friendly feeling for the family of Condé; there is direct proof of the contrary feeling in the vaults of the donjon of Vincennes."

"Well, well," thought Canolles, "it seems that they have talked the matter over, for they all say the same thing."

Meanwhile there was more stir in the passage, which the messenger did not notice, on account of the embarrassment caused by his peculiar situation.

"After all, monsieur," the princess continued, "what do you desire?"

"I desire nothing, madame," said Canolles, drawing himself up. "It is her Majesty the queen who desires that I should come to this château, that I should be admitted to the honor of your Highness's society, unworthy as I am, and that I should contribute to the utmost of my ability to restore harmony between two princes of the blood royal, at enmity for no cause at such a sad time as this."

"For no cause?" cried the princess; "do you say that there was no cause for our rupture?"

"I beg pardon, madame," rejoined Canolles. "I say nothing; I am not a judge, but an interpreter simply."

"And until the harmony of which you speak is restored the queen sets spies upon me, on the pretext—"

"And so I am a spy!" exclaimed Canolles, exasperated beyond measure. "The word is out at last! I thank your Highness for your frankness."

As a feeling of desperation began to take possession of him he fell into one of those superb attitudes which painters seek so earnestly to impart to the figures in their inanimate tableaux, and which actors endeavor to assume in their tableaux vivants.

"So it is definitely decided that I am a spy!" he continued. "In that case, madame, I pray you treat me as such wretches are commonly treated; forget that I am the envoy of a queen, that that queen is responsible for every act of mine, that I am simply an atom obeying her breath. Order me turned out of doors by your servants, order your gentlemen to put me to death, place me face to face with people whom I can answer with club or sword; but do not, I pray you, madame, who are placed so high by birth, by merit, and by misfortune, do not insult an officer who but fulfils his bounden duty as soldier and as subject!"

These words straight from the heart, sad as a moan, and harsh as a reproach, were calculated to produce and did produce a profound impression. While listening to them the princess raised herself upon her elbow, with glistening eyes and trembling hand.

"God forbid," said she, extending her hand almost imploringly toward the messenger when he had ceased to speak. "God forbid that I should intentionally insult so gallant a gentleman as yourself! No, Monsieur de Canolles, I do not suspect your loyalty; consider my words unsaid; they were unkind, I admit, and I have no wish to wound you. No, no, you are a noble-hearted gentleman, Monsieur le Baron, and I do you full and entire justice."

As the princess, in the act of uttering these words, impelled, doubtless, by the same generous impulse which drew them from her heart, had involuntarily thrust her head forward out of the shadow of the heavy curtains, thereby exposing to view her white forehead, her luxuriant blond hair, her bright red lips, and her lovely eyes, wet with tears, Canolles started back, for it was as if a vision had passed before his eyes, and it seemed to him as if he were once more inhaling a perfume the memory of which alone sufficed to intoxicate him. It seemed to him that one of the golden doors through which pass lovely dreams, opened to bring back to him the vanished swarm of gladsome thoughts and joys of love. He gazed with more assurance and with new light at the bed, and in a second, by the passing glare of a flash which lighted up the whole past, he recognized in the princess lying before him the Vicomte de Cambes.

For some moments his agitation had been so great that the princess could attribute it to the stern reproach which had stung him so deeply, and as her impulsive movement lasted but an instant, as she drew back almost immediately into the shadow, covered her eyes once more, and hid her slender white hand, she essayed, not without emotion, but without anxiety, to take up the conversation where she had left it.

"You were saying, monsieur?" said she.

But Canolles was dazzled, fascinated; visions were passing and repassing before his eyes, and his brain was in a whirl; his senses forsook him; he was on the point of throwing respect to the wind, and of asking questions. But an instinctive feeling, perhaps that which God implants in the hearts of those who love, which women call bashfulness, but which is nothing more nor less than avarice, counselled Canolles to dissemble still and wait; not to put an end to his dream, not to compromise by an imprudent, hasty word the happiness of his whole life.

He did not add a gesture or a word to what he was called upon to do or say. Great God! what would become of him if this great princess should suddenly recognize him; if he should inspire her now with horror as he had inspired her with suspicion at Master Biscarros' inn; if she should recur to the accusation she had abandoned; and if she should conclude that it was his purpose to avail himself of his official position, of a royal command, to continue a pursuit, which was pardonable so long as the Vicomte or Vicomtesse de Cambes was its object, but became rank insolence, almost a crime, when directed, against a princess of the blood?

"But," he suddenly reflected, "is it possible that a princess of her name and station could have been travelling about alone with a single attendant?"

Thereupon, as always happens under such circumstances, when a wavering, despairing hope seeks something to revive it, Canolles in desperation let his eyes wander about the room until they fell upon the portrait of the woman holding her son by the hand.

At the sight a ray of light flashed through his mind, and he instinctively stepped nearer to the portrait. The pseudo-princess could not restrain a slight exclamation, and when Canolles, hearing her voice, turned his head, he saw that her face was altogether hidden from him.

"Oho!" said Canolles to himself, "what does that mean? Either it was the princess whom I met in the Bordeaux road, or I am the victim of a trick, and the person in that bed is not the princess. At all events, we will soon see."

"Madame," he said, abruptly, "I know not what to think of your present silence, and I recognize—"

"Whom do you recognize?" hastily exclaimed the lady in the bed.

"I recognize the fact," continued Canolles, "that I have been so unfortunate as to inspire in you the same feeling I inspired in the princess dowager."

"Ah!" the voice involuntarily gave utterance to this sigh of relief.

Canolles' remark was not strictly logical, perhaps, and had little relevancy to their conversation, but his purpose was accomplished. He noticed the sensation of terror which prompted the interruption, and the joyful sensation with which his last words were received.

"But," he continued, "I am none the less compelled to say to your Highness, distasteful as it is to me, that I am to remain at the château and accompany your Highness wherever it may be your pleasure to go."

"So that I cannot be alone even in my own apartments?" cried the princess. "Ah! monsieur, that is worse than an indignity!"

"I have informed your Highness that such are my instructions; but I beg you to have no fears on that score," added Canolles, with a piercing glance at the occupant of the bed, and emphasizing every word; "you should know better than any one that I am not slow to yield to a woman's entreaties."

"I?" cried the princess, whose tone denoted more embarrassment than surprise. "In truth, monsieur, I cannot fathom your meaning; I have no idea to what circumstance you allude."

"Madame," rejoined Canolles, bowing, "I thought that the servant who announced me to your Highness mentioned my name. I am Baron de Canolles."

"Indeed," said the princess in a more confident voice; "what matters it to me, monsieur?"

"I thought that having already had the honor of obliging your Highness—"

"Of obliging me! how, I pray to know?" retorted the voice, in a changed tone, which reminded Canolles of a certain very wrathful, but at the same time very timorous voice, which he remembered too well.

"By carrying out my instructions to the letter," he replied with the utmost respect.

The princess's apprehension seemed to be allayed once more.

"Monsieur," said she, "I have no wish to make you remiss in your duty; carry out your instructions, whatever they may be."

"Madame, I am as yet, I am happy to say, entirely unskilled in the persecution of women, and know even less of the method to be employed in insulting a princess. I have the honor therefore to repeat to your Highness what I have already said to the princess dowager, that I am your very humble servant. Deign to give me your word that you will not leave the château unaccompanied by me, and I will relieve you of my presence, which, as I can well understand, is hateful to your Highness."

"But in that case, monsieur," said the princess, quickly, "you will not carry out your orders."

"I shall do what my conscience tells me that I ought to do."

"Monsieur de Canolles, I swear that I will not leave Chantilly without giving you due notice."

"Then, madame," said Canolles, bowing to the ground, "forgive me for having been the involuntary cause of arousing your wrath for an instant. Your Highness will not see me again until you are pleased to summon me."

"I thank you, baron," said the voice, with a joyful inflection, which seemed to find an echo in the passage. "Go, go! I thank you; to-morrow I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again."

This time the baron recognized, beyond possibility of mistake, the voice, the eyes, and the unspeakably delicious smile of the fascinating being who slipped between his fingers, so to speak, the night that the courier brought him the order from the Duc d'Épernon. A last glance at the portrait, dimly lighted as it was, showed the baron, whose eyes were beginning to be accustomed to the half-darkness, the aquiline nose of the Maillé family, the black hair and deep-set eyes of the princess; while the woman before him, who had just played through the first act of the difficult part she had undertaken, had the eye level with the face, the straight nose with dilated nostrils, the mouth dimpled at the corners by frequent smiling, and the plump cheeks which denote anything rather than the habit of serious meditation.

Canolles knew all that he wished to know; he bowed once more as respectfully as if he still believed that he was in the princess's presence, and withdrew to the apartment set apart for him.

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II.

Canolles had formed no definite plan of action. Once in his own quarters he began to stride rapidly back and forth, as undecided folk are wont to do, without noticing that Castorin, who was awaiting his return, rose when he saw him, and was following him, holding in his hands a robe de chambre, behind which he was hardly visible.

Castorin stumbled over a chair and Canolles turned about.

"Well," said he, "what are you doing with that robe de chambre?"

"I am waiting for monsieur to take off his coat."

"I don't know when I shall take off my coat. Put the robe de chambre on a chair and wait."

"What! monsieur does not propose to take off his coat?" queried Castorin, who was by nature a capricious rascal, but seemed on this occasion more intractable than ever. "Monsieur does not intend to retire at once?"

"No."

"When does monsieur intend to retire, pray?"

"What's that to you?"

"It's a great deal to me, as I am very tired."

"Ah! indeed!" exclaimed Canolles, pausing in his walk, and looking Castorin in the face, "you are very tired, are you?"

It was easy to read upon the lackey's face the impertinent expression common to all servants who are dying with the longing to be turned out of doors.

Canolles shrugged his shoulders.

"Go and wait in the antechamber," said he; "when I have need of you I will ring."

"I forewarn monsieur that if he delays long, he will not find me in the antechamber."

"Where shall you be, I pray to know?"

"In my bed. It seems to me that after travelling two hundred leagues it is high time to go to bed."

"Monsieur Castorin," said Canolles, "you are a clown."

"If monsieur considers a clown unworthy to be his servant, monsieur has but to say the word, and I will relieve him of my services," rejoined Castorin, with his most majestic air.

Canolles was not in a patient mood, and if Castorin had possessed the power to catch a glimpse even of the shadow of the storm that was brewing in his master's mind, it is certain that, however anxious he might have been to be free, he would have chosen another time to hazard the suggestion. Canolles walked up to him, and took one of the buttons of his doublet between his thumb and forefinger,—the familiar trick, long afterwards, of a much greater man than poor Canolles ever was.

"Say that again," said he.

"I say," rejoined Castorin with unabated impudence, "that if monsieur is not content with me I will relieve monsieur of my services."

Canolles let go the button, and went gravely to get his cane. Castorin was not slow to grasp the meaning of that manœuvre.

"Monsieur," he cried, "beware what you do! I am no longer a common valet; I am in the service of Madame la Princesse!"

"Oho!" said Canolles, lowering the cane which was already in the air; "oho! you are in the service of Madame la Princesse?"

"Yes, monsieur, since half an hour ago."

"Who engaged you to take service with her?"

"Monsieur Pompée, her intendant."

"Monsieur Pompée?"

"Yes."

"Well! why didn't you tell me so at once?" cried Canolles. "Yes, yes, my dear Castorin, you are quite right to leave my service, and here are two pistoles to indemnify you for the blows I was on the point of giving you."

"Oh!" ejaculated Castorin, not daring to take the money; "what does that mean? Is monsieur making sport of me?"

"Not so. On the contrary I bid you by all means be Madame la Princesse's servant. When is your service to begin, by the way?"

"From the moment that monsieur gives me my liberty."

"Very well; I give you your liberty from to-morrow morning."

"And until then?"

"Until to-morrow morning you are my servant and must obey me."

"Willingly! What are monsieur's orders?" said Castorin, deciding to take the two pistoles.

"I order you, as you are so desirous to sleep, to undress and get into my bed."

"What? what is monsieur's meaning? I do not understand,"

"You don't need to understand, but simply to obey. Undress at once; I will assist you."

"Monsieur will assist me?"

"To be sure; as you are to play the part of the Baron de Canolles, I must needs play the part of Castorin."

Thereupon, without awaiting his servant's leave, the baron removed his doublet and hat and put them on himself, and locking the door upon him before he had recovered from his surprise, ran rapidly downstairs.

He was at last beginning to see through the mystery, although certain parts of it were still enveloped in mist. For two hours past it had seemed to him as if nothing of all that he had seen or heard was perfectly natural. The attitude of every one at Chantilly was constrained and stiff; everybody that he met seemed to be playing a part, and yet the various details all seemed to harmonize in a way which indicated to the queen's envoy that he must redouble his watchfulness if he did not choose to be himself the victim of some grand mystification.

The presence of Pompée in conjunction with that of the Vicomte de Cambes cleared away many doubts, and the few which still remained in Canolles' mind were completely dissipated when, as he left the court-yard, he saw, notwithstanding the profound darkness of the night, four men coming toward him and about to enter the door through which he had just passed. They were led by the same valet who ushered him into the presence of the princess. Another man wrapped in a great cloak followed behind.

The little party halted in the doorway awaiting the orders of the man in the cloak.

"You know where he lodges," said the latter, in an imperious tone, addressing the valet, "and you know him, for you introduced him. Do you watch him, therefore, and see that he doesn't leave his apartment; station your men on the stairway, in the corridor, anywhere, so that, without suspecting it, he may be watched himself, instead of watching their Highnesses."

Canolles made himself more invisible than a ghost in the darkest corner he could find; from there, unseen himself, he saw his five keepers pass through the door, while the man in the cloak, having made sure that they were carrying out his orders, returned the same way that he came.

"This gives me no very definite information," said Canolles to himself as he looked after him, "for it may be simply their indignation that leads them to return like for like. If that devil of a Castorin won't cry out or do some idiotic thing! I did wrong not to gag him; unluckily it's too late now. Well, I must commence my round."

With that, Canolles cast a keen glance around, then crossed the court-yard to that wing of the building behind which the stables were located.

All the life of the château seemed to have taken refuge in that locality. He could hear horses pawing the ground, and hurried footsteps. In the harness-room there was a great clashing of bits and spurs. Carriages were being rolled out of the sheds, and voices, stifled by apprehension, but which could be distinguished by listening attentively, were calling and answering one another. Canolles stood still for a moment listening. There was no room for doubt that preparations for departure were in progress.

He swiftly traversed the distance between the wings, passed through an arched gateway, and reached the front of the château.

There he stopped.

The windows of the ground-floor apartments were too brilliantly illuminated for him not to divine that a large number of torches were lighted inside, and as they went and came, causing great patches of light to sweep across the level turf, Canolles understood that that was the centre of activity, and the true seat of the enterprise.

He hesitated at first to pry into the secret which they were trying to hide from him. But he reflected that his position as an agent of the queen, and the responsibility thereby imposed upon him, would excuse many things to the satisfaction of the most scrupulous conscience. So he crept cautiously along the wall, the base of which was made all the darker by the brilliantly lighted windows, which were some six or seven feet from the ground. He stepped upon a stepping-stone, thence to a projection in the wall, clung with one hand to a ring, with the other to the window-sill, and darted through a corner of the window the keenest and most searching glance that ever made its way into the sanctuary of a conspiracy.

This is what he saw.

A woman standing before a toilet-table and putting in place the last pin necessary to hold her travelling-hat upon her head, and near by, several maids dressing a child in hunting costume. The child's back was turned to Canolles, and he could see nothing but his long, blond curls. But the light of two six-branched candelabra, held upon either side of the toilet-table by footmen in the attitude of caryatides, shone full upon the lady's face, in which Canolles at once recognized the original of the portrait he had recently examined in the half-light of the princess's apartment. There were the long face, the stern mouth, the imperiously curved nose of the woman whose living image stood before Canolles. Everything about her betokened the habit of domination,—her imperious gesture, her sparkling eye, the abrupt movement of her head.

In like manner everything in the bearing of those about her betokened the habit of unquestioning obedience,—their frequent bowing, the haste with which they ran to bring whatever she might ask for, their promptness in responding to the voice of their sovereign, or anticipating her commands.

Several officials of the household, among whom Canolles recognized the valet de chambre, were pouring into portmanteaux, trunks, and chests, some jewels, others money, and others the various portions of that woman's arsenal known as the toilet. The little prince, meanwhile, was playing about among the assiduous servitors, but by a strange fatality Canolles was unable to catch a glimpse of his face.

"I suspected it," he muttered; "they are putting a trick upon me, and these people are making preparations to go away. Very good: but I can with a wave of my hand change this scene of mystification into a scene of lamentation; I have only to run out upon the terrace and blow this silver whistle three times, and in five minutes two hundred men will have burst into the château in answer to its shrill blast, will have arrested the princesses and bound all these fellows hand and foot who are laughing together so slyly. Yes," he continued, but now it was his heart that spoke rather than his lips; "yes, but I should bring irretrievable ruin upon that other, who is sleeping, or pretending to sleep, over yonder; she will hate me, and it will be no more than I deserve. "Worse than all, she will despise me, saying that I have acted the spy to the end—and yet, if she obeys the princess, why should not I obey the queen?"

At that moment, as if chance were determined to combat these symptoms of returning resolution, a door of the apartment where the princess was dressing opened, and gave admittance to two persons, a man of fifty years and a woman of twenty, who hurried in with joyful faces. At that sight Canolles' whole heart passed into his eyes, for he recognized the lovely hair, the fresh lips, the speaking eye of the Vicomte de Cambes, as that individual, with smiling face, respectfully kissed the hand of Clémence de Maillé, Princesse de Condé. But on this occasion the viscount wore the garments of her own sex, and made the loveliest viscountess on the face of the earth.

Canolles would have given ten years of his life to hear their conversation; but to no purpose did he glue his ear to the glass; an unintelligible buzzing was all that he could hear. He saw the princess bid the younger woman adieu, and kiss her on the brow, saying as she did so something which made all the others laugh; he then saw the viscountess return to the state apartments with some inferior officials clothed in the uniforms of their superiors. He even saw the worthy Pompée, swollen with pride, in orange coat trimmed with silver-lace, strutting about with noble mien, and like Don Jophet of Armenia, leaning upon the hilt of an enormous rapier, in attendance upon his mistress, as she gracefully raised the train of her long satin robe.

Then, through another door at the left, the princess's escort began to file out noiselessly, led by Madame de Condé herself, whose bearing was that of a queen, not of a fugitive. Next to her came Vialas, carrying in his arms the little Duc d'Enghien, wrapped in a cloak; then Lenet, carrying a carved casket and divers bundles of papers, and last of all the intendant of the château, closing the procession, which was preceded by two officers with drawn swords.

They all left the room by a secret passageway. Canolles immediately leaped down from his post of observation and ran to the gateway, where the lights had meanwhile been extinguished; and he saw the whole cortège pass silently through on the way to the stables; the hour of departure was at hand.

At that moment Canolles thought only of the duties imposed upon him by the mission with which the queen had intrusted him. In the person of this woman who was about to leave the château, he was allowing armed civil war to go abroad and gnaw once more at the entrails of France. Certes, it was a shameful thing for him, a man, to become a spy upon a woman, and her keeper; but the Duchesse de Longueville, who set fire to the four corners of France, she was a woman too.

Canolles rushed toward the terrace, which overlooked the park, and put the silver whistle to his lips.

It would have been all up with the preparations for departure! Madame de Condé would not have left Chantilly, or, if she had done so, would not have taken a hundred steps before she and her escort were surrounded by a force thrice her own; and thus Canolles would have fulfilled his mission without the least danger to himself; thus, at a single blow, he would have destroyed the fortune and the future of the house of Condé, and would by the same blow have built up his own fortune upon the ruins of theirs, and have laid the foundations of future grandeur, as the Vitrys and Luynes did in the old days, and more recently the Guitauts and Miossens, under circumstances which were perhaps of less moment to the welfare of the realm.

But Canolles raised his eyes to the apartment where the soft, sad light of the night-lamp shone behind curtains of red velvet, and he fancied that he could see the shadow of his beloved outlined upon the great white window-blinds.

Thereupon all his resolutions, all his selfish arguments faded away before the gentle beams of that light, as the dreams and phantoms of the night fade away before the first beams of the rising sun.

"Monsieur de Mazarin," he said to himself in a passionate outburst, "is so rich that he can afford to lose all these princes and princesses who seek to escape him; but I am not rich enough to lose the treasure which belongs henceforth to me, and which I will guard as jealously as a dragon. At this moment she is alone, in my power, dependent upon me; at any hour of the day or night I can enter her apartment; she will not fly without telling me, for I have her sacred word. What care I though the queen be deceived and Monsieur de Mazarin lose his temper? I was told to watch Madame la Princesse, and I am watching her. They should have given me her description or have set a more practised spy than myself upon her."

With that, Canolles put the whistle in his pocket, listened to the grinding of the bolts, heard the distant rumbling of the carriages over the bridge in the park, and the clattering of many horses' hoofs, growing gradually fainter, until it died away altogether. When everything had disappeared, when there was nothing more to see or hear, heedless of the fact that he was staking his life against a woman's love,—that is to say, against a mere shadow of happiness,—he glided into the second deserted court-yard, and cautiously ascended the staircase leading to his apartment, the darkness being unrelieved by the faintest gleam of light.

But, cautious as his movements were, when he reached the corridor he unavoidably stumbled against a person who was apparently listening at his door, and who uttered a muffled cry of alarm.

"Who are you? Who are you?" demanded the person in question, in a frightened voice.

"Pardieu!" said Canolles, "who are you yourself, who prowl about this staircase like a spy?"

"I am Pompée."

"Madame la Princesse's intendant?"

"Yes, yes,-Madame la Princesse's intendant."

"Ah! that's a lucky chance; I am Castorin."

"Castorin, Monsieur de Canolles' valet?"

"Himself."

"Ah! my dear Castorin," said Pompée, "I'll wager that I gave you a good fright."

"Fright?"

"Yes! Dame! when one has never been a soldier—Can I do anything for you, my dear friend?" continued Pompée, resuming his air of importance.

"Yes."

"Tell me what it is."

"You can inform Madame la Princesse immediately that my master desires to speak with her."

"At this hour?"

"Even so."

"Impossible!"

"You think so?"

"I am sure of it."

"Then she will not receive my master?"

"No."

"By order of the king, Monsieur Pompée! Go and tell her that."

"By order of the king!" cried Pompée. "I will go."

He ran precipitately downstairs, impelled at once by respect and fear, two greyhounds which are quite capable of making a tortoise run at their pace.

Canolles kept on and entered his room, where he found Castorin snoring lustily, stretched out magisterially in a large easy-chair. He resumed his uniform and awaited the result of his latest step.

"'Faith!" he said to himself, "if I don't do Monsieur de Mazarin's business very successfully, it seems to me that I don't do badly with my own."

He waited in vain, however, for Pompée's return; and after ten minutes, finding that he did not come, nor any other in his stead, he resolved to present himself unannounced. He therefore aroused Monsieur Castorin, whose bile was soothed by an hour's sleep, bade him, in a tone which admitted no reply, to be ready for any thing that might happen, and bent his steps toward the princess's apartments.

At the door he found a footman in very ill humor, because the bell rang just as his service was at an end, and he was looking forward, like Monsieur Castorin, to a refreshing slumber after the fatiguing day.

"What do you wish, monsieur?" he asked when he saw Canolles.

"I request the honor of paying my respects to Madame la Princesse."

"At this hour, monsieur?"

"What's that? 'at this hour'?"

"Yes, it seems to me very late."

"How dare you say that, villain?"

"But, monsieur—" stammered the footman.

"I no longer request, I demand," said Canolles, in a supremely haughty tone.

"You demand? Only Madame la Princesse gives orders here."

"The king gives orders everywhere. By the king's order!"

The lackey shuddered and hung his head.

"Pardon, monsieur," he said, trembling from head to foot, "but I am only a poor servant, and cannot take it upon myself to open Madame la Princesse's door; permit me to go and awaken a chamberlain."

"Are the chamberlains accustomed to retire at eleven o'clock at the château of Chantilly?"

"They hunted all day," faltered the footman.

"In truth," muttered Canolles, "I must give them time to dress some one as a chamberlain. Very well," he added aloud; "go; I will wait."

The footman started off on the run to carry the alarm through the château, where Pompée, terrified beyond measure by his unfortunate encounter, had already sown unspeakable dismay.

Canolles, left to his own devices, pricked up his ears and opened his eyes.

He heard much running to and fro in the salons and corridors; he saw by the light of expiring torches men armed with muskets taking their places at the angles of the stairways; on all sides he felt that the silence of stupefaction which reigned throughout the château a moment before was succeeded by a threatening murmur.

Canolles put his hand to his whistle and drew near a window, whence he could see the dark mass of the trees, at the foot of which he had stationed the two hundred men he brought with him.

"No," said he, "that would simply lead to a pitched battle, and that is not what I want. It's much better to wait; the worst that can happen to me by waiting is to be murdered, while if I act hastily I may ruin her."

Canolles had no sooner come to the end of this reflection than the door opened and a new personage appeared upon the scene.

"Madame la Princesse is not visible," said this personage, so hurriedly that he had not time to salute the gentleman; "she is in bed, and has given positive orders that no one be admitted."

"Who are you?" said Canolles, eying the new-comer from head to foot. "And who taught you to speak to a gentleman with your hat on your head?"

As he asked the question Canolles coolly removed the man's hat with the end of his cane.

"Monsieur!" cried the latter, stepping back with dignity.

"I asked you who you are."

"I am—I am, as you can see by my uniform, captain of her Highness's guards."

Canolles smiled. He had had time to scrutinize his interlocutor, and saw that he was dealing with some butler with a paunch as round as his bottles, some prosperous Vatel imprisoned in an official doublet, which, from lack of time, or superabundance of belly, was not properly secured.

"Very good, master captain of the guards," said Canolles, "pick up your hat and answer."

The captain executed the first branch of Canolles' injunction like one who had studied that excellent maxim of military discipline: "To know how to command, one must know how to obey."

"Captain of the guards!" continued Canolles. "Peste! that's a fine post to hold!"

"Why, yes, monsieur, well enough; but what then?" observed that official, drawing himself up.

"Don't swell out so much, Monsieur le Capitaine," said Canolles, "or you will burst off the last button, and your breeches will fall down about your heels, which would be most disgraceful."

"But who are you, monsieur?" demanded the pretended captain, taking his turn at asking questions.

"Monsieur, I will follow the example of urbanity set by you, and will answer your question as you answered mine. I am captain in the regiment of Navailles, and I come hither in the king's name as his ambassador, clothed with powers—which will be exerted in a peaceful or violent manner, according as his Majesty's commands are or are not obeyed."

"Violent!" cried the pretended captain. "In a violent manner?"

"Very violent, I give you warning."

"Even where her Highness is personally concerned?"

"Why not? Her Highness is his Majesty's first subject, nothing more."

"Monsieur, do not resort to force; I have fifty men-at-arms ready to avenge her Highness's honor."

Canolles did not choose to tell him that his fifty men-at-arms were simply footmen and scullions, fit troops to serve under such a leader, and that, so far as the princess's honor was concerned, it was at that moment riding along the Bordeaux road with the princess.

He replied simply, with that indifferent air which is more terrifying than an open threat, and is familiar to brave men and those who are accustomed to danger:—

"If you have fifty men-at-arms, Monsieur le Capitaine, I have two hundred soldiers, who form the advance-guard of the royal army. Do you propose to put yourself in open rebellion against his Majesty?"

"No, monsieur, no!" the stout man hastened to reply, sadly crestfallen; "God forbid! but I beg you to bear me witness that I yield to force alone."

"That is the least I can do for you as your brother-in-arms."

"Very well; then I will take you to Madame the Princess Dowager, who is not yet asleep."

Canolles had no need to reflect to appreciate the terrible danger that lay hidden in this snare; but he turned it aside without ceremony, thanks to his omnipotence.

"My orders are, not to see Madame the Princess Dowager, but the younger princess."

The captain of the guards once more bent his head, imparted a retrograde movement to his great legs, trailed his long sword across the floor, and stalked majestically through the door between two sentries, who stood trembling there throughout the scene we have described, and were very near quitting their post when they heard of the presence of two hundred men,—so little disposed were they to become martyrs to fidelity in the sacking of the château of Chantilly.

Ten minutes later the captain returned, followed by two guards, and with wearisome formality undertook to escort Canolles to the apartment of the princess, to which he was at last introduced without further delay.

He recognized the room itself, the furniture, the bed, and even the perfume, but he looked in vain for two things: the portrait of the true princess which he had noticed at the time of his first visit, and to which he owed his first suspicion of the trick they proposed to play him; and the figure of the false princess, for whom he had made so great a sacrifice.

The portrait had been removed; and as a precautionary measure, somewhat tardily adopted, the face of the person on the bed was turned toward the wall with true princely impertinence. Two women were standing in the passage between the bed and the wall.

The gentleman would willingly have passed over this lack of courtesy; but as the thought came to his mind that possibly some new substitution had enabled Madame de Cambes to take flight as the princess had done, his hair stood on end with dismay, and he determined to make sure at once of the identity of the person who occupied the bed, by exerting the supreme power with which he was clothed by his mission.

"Madame," said he with a low bow, "I ask your Highness's pardon for presenting myself at this hour, especially after I had given you my word that I would await your commands; but I have noticed a great stir in the château—"

The person in the bed started, but did not reply. Canolles looked in vain for some indication that the woman before him was really the one he sought, but amid the billows of lace and the soft mass of quilts and coverlets it was impossible for him to do anything more than distinguish a recumbent form.

"And," he continued, "I owe it to myself to satisfy myself that this bed still contains the same person with whom I had the honor of half an hour's conversation."

These words were followed, not by a simple start, but by a downright contortion of terror. The movement did not escape the notice of Canolles, who was alarmed by it.

"If she has deceived me," he thought, "if, despite her solemn promise, she has fled, I will leave the château. I will take horse, I will place myself at the head of my two hundred men, and I will capture my runaways, though I have to set fire to thirty villages to light my road."

He waited a moment longer; but the person in the bed did not speak or turn toward him; it was evident that she wished to gain time.

"Madame," said Canolles, at last giving vent to a feeling of impatience, which he had not the courage to conceal, "I beg your Highness to remember that I am sent hither by the king, and in the king's name I demand the honor of seeing your face."

"Oh! this inquisition is unendurable," exclaimed a trembling voice, which sent a thrill of joy through the young officer's veins; for he recognized therein a quality which no other voice could counterfeit. "If it is, as you say, the king who compels you to act thus, the king is still a mere child, and does not yet know the duties of a gentleman; to force a woman to show her face is no less insulting than to snatch away her mask."

"There is a phrase, madame, before which women bend the knee when it is uttered by a king, and kings when it is uttered by destiny. That phrase is: 'It must be.'"

"Very well, since it must be, since I am alone and helpless against the king's order and his messenger's persistence, I obey, monsieur; look at me."

Thereupon the rampart of pillows, bed-clothes, and laces which protected the fair besieged was suddenly put aside, and through the improvised breach appeared the blond head and lovely face which the voice led him to expect to see,—the cheeks flushed with shame, rather than with indignation. With the swift glance of a man accustomed to equivalent, if not strictly similar situations, Canolles satisfied himself that it was not anger which kept those eyes, veiled by velvety eyelashes, bent upon the ground, or made that white hand tremble, as it confined the rebellious waves of hair upon an alabaster neck.

The pseudo-princess remained for an instant in that attitude, which she would have liked to make threatening, but which expressed nothing more than vexation, while Canolles gazed at her, breathing ecstatically, and repressing with both hands the tumultuous, joyful beating of his heart.

"Well, monsieur," said the ill-used fair one after a few seconds of silence, "has my humiliation gone far enough? Have you scrutinized me at your leisure? Your triumph is complete, is it not? Show yourself a generous victor, then, and retire."

"I would be glad to do so, madame; but I must carry out my instructions to the end. Thus far I have performed only that part of my mission which concerns your Highness; but it is not enough to have seen you; I must now see Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien."

A terrible silence followed these words, uttered in the tone of a man who knows that he has the right to command, and who proposes to be obeyed. The false princess raised herself in bed, leaning upon her hand, and fixed upon Canolles one of those strange glances which seemed to belong to none but her, they expressed so many things at once. It seemed to say: "Have you recognized me? Do you know who I really am? If you know, forgive me and spare me; you are the stronger, so take pity on me."

Canolles understood all that her glance said to him; but he hardened himself against its seductive eloquence, and answered it in spoken words:—

"Impossible, madame; my orders are explicit."

"Let everything be done as you choose, then, monsieur, as you have no consideration for rank or position. Go; these ladies will take you to my son's bedside."

"Might not these ladies, instead of taking me to your son, bring your son to you, madame? It seems to me that that would be infinitely preferable."

"Why so, monsieur?" inquired the false princess, evidently more disturbed by this latest request than by any previous one.,

"Because, in the meantime, I could communicate to your Highness a part of my mission which must be communicated to you alone."

"To me alone?"

"To you alone," Canolles replied, with a lower reverence than any he had achieved as yet.

The princess's expression, which had changed from dignity to supplication, and from supplication to anxiety, now changed once more to abject terror, as she fixed her eyes upon Canolles' face.

"What is there to alarm you so in the idea of a tête-à-tête with me, madame?" said he. "Are you not a princess, and am not I a gentleman?"

"Yes, you are right, monsieur, and I am wrong to be alarmed. Yes, although I now have the pleasure of seeing you for the first time, your reputation as a courteous, loyal gentleman has come to my ears. Go, mesdames, and bring Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien to me."

The two women came forth from the passage beside the bed, and walked toward the door; they turned once to be sure that the order was intended to be obeyed, and at a gesture confirming the words of their mistress, or of her locum tenens, left the room.

Canolles looked after them until they had closed the door. Then his eyes, sparkling with joy, returned to the princess.

"Tell me, Monsieur de Canolles," said she, sitting up and folding her hands, "tell me why you persecute me thus."

As she spoke she looked at the young officer, not with the haughty gaze of a princess, which she had tried with but poor success, but with a look so touching and so full of meaning that all the details of their first meeting, all the intoxicating episodes of the journey, all the memories of his nascent love came rushing over him, and enveloped his heart as with perfumed vapor.

"Madame," said he, stepping toward the bed, "it is Madame de Condé whom I am here to watch in the king's name,—not you, who are not Madame de Condé."

The young woman to whom these words were addressed gave a little shriek, became pale as death, and pressed one of her hands against her heart.

"What do you mean, monsieur?" she cried; "who do you think I am?"

"Oh! as for that," retorted Canolles, "I should be much embarrassed to explain; for I would be almost willing to swear that you are the most charming of viscounts were you not the most adorable of viscountesses."

"Monsieur," said the pretended princess, hoping to awe Canolles by reasserting her dignity, "of all you say to me I understand but one thing, and that is that you insult me!"

"Madame," said Canolles, "we do not fail in respect to God because we adore him. We do not insult angels because we kneel before them."

And Canolles bent forward as if to fall on his knees.

"Monsieur," said the countess, hastily, checking him with a gesture,—"monsieur, the Princesse de Condé cannot suffer—"

"The Princesse de Condé, madame, is at this moment riding along the Bordeaux road on a good horse, accompanied by Monsieur Vialas her equerry, Monsieur Lenet her adviser, her gentlemen in waiting, her officers, her whole household, in short; and she has no concern in what is taking place between the Baron de Canolles and the Vicomte, or Vicomtesse, de Cambes."

"What are you saying, monsieur? Are you mad?"

"No, madame; I am simply telling you what I have myself seen and heard."

"In that case, if you have seen and heard all that you say, your mission should be at an end."

"You think so, madame? Must I then return to Paris, and confess to the queen that, rather than grieve the woman whom I love (I name no one, madame, so do not look so angrily at me), I have violated her orders, allowed her enemy to escape, and closed my eyes to what I saw,—that I have, in a word, betrayed, yes, betrayed the cause of my king?"

The viscountess seemed to be touched, and gazed at the baron with almost tender compassion.

"Have you not the best of all excuses," said she, "the impossibility of doing otherwise? Could you, alone, stop Madame la Princesse's imposing escort? Do your orders bid you to fight fifty gentlemen single-handed?"

"I was not alone, madame," said Canolles, shaking his head. "I had, and still have, in the woods yonder, not five hundred yards away, two hundred soldiers, whom I can summon in a moment by blowing my whistle. It would have been a simple matter, therefore, for me to stop Madame la Princesse, who would have found resistance of no avail. But even if the force under my command had been weaker than her escort, instead of four times stronger, I could still have fought, and sold my life dearly. That would have been as easy to me," the young man continued, bending forward more and more, "as it would be sweet to me to touch that hand if I dared."

The hand upon which the baron's glowing eyes were fixed, the soft, plump, white hand, had fallen outside the bed, and moved nervously at every word the baron spoke. The viscountess herself, blinded by the electric current of love, the effects of which she had felt in the little inn at Jaulnay, could not remember that she ought to withdraw the hand which had furnished Canolles with so happy a simile; she forgot her duty in the premises, and the young man, falling upon his knees, put his lips timidly to the hand, which was sharply withdrawn at the contact, as if a red-hot iron had burned it.

"Thanks, Monsieur de Canolles," said she. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you have done for me; believe that I shall never forget it. But I pray you to double the value of the service by realizing my position and leaving me. Must we not part, now that your task is ended?"

This we, uttered in a tone so soft that it seemed to contain a shade of regret, made the most secret fibres of Canolles' heart vibrate painfully. Indeed, excessive joy is almost always accompanied by something very like pain.

"I will obey, madame," said he; "but I will venture to observe, not as a pretext for disobedience, but to spare you possible remorse hereafter, that if I obey I am lost. The moment that I admit my error, and cease to pretend to be deceived by your stratagem, I become the victim of my good-nature. I am declared a traitor, imprisoned—shot, it may be; and it will be no more than just, for I am a traitor."

Claire cried out in dismay, and herself seized Canolles' hand, which she immediately let fall again with charming confusion.

"Then what are we to do?"

The young man's heart swelled. That blessed we seemed in a fair way to become Madame de Cambes' favorite pronoun.

"What! ruin you!—you, who are so kind and generous!" she exclaimed. "I ruin you? Oh! never! At what sacrifice can I save you? Tell me! tell me!"

"You must permit me, madame, to play my part to the end. It is essential, as I told you but now, that I seem to be your dupe, and that I report to Monsieur de Mazarin what I see, not what I know."

"Yes, but if it is discovered that you have done all this for me, that we have met before, that you have seen my face, then I shall be the one to be ruined: do not forget that!"

"Madame," said Canolles, with admirably simulated melancholy, "I do not think, judging from your coldness, and the dignity which it costs you so little to maintain in my presence, that you are likely to divulge a secret which, after all, has no existence in your heart, at all events."

Claire made no reply; but a fleeting glance, an almost imperceptible smile, replied in a way to make Canolles the happiest of men.

"I may remain, then?" he said, with an indescribable smile.

"Since it must be so!" was the reply.

"In that case, I must write to Monsieur de Mazarin."

"Yes, go."

"What's that?"

"I told you to go and write to him."

"Not so. I must write to him here, from your room; I must date my letter at the foot of your bed."

"But it's not proper."

"Here are my instructions, madame; read them for yourself."

And Canolles handed a paper to the viscountess, who read:—

"'Monsieur le Baron de Canolles will keep Madame la
Princesse and her son, Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien, in
sight—'"

"In sight," said Canolles.

"In sight; yes, so it says."

Claire realized all the advantage that a man as deeply in love as Canolles was might take upon the strength of such instructions, but she also realized how great a service she would render the princess by prolonging the deception of the court.

"Write, then," she said, resignedly.

Canolles questioned her with his eyes, and in the same way she indicated a secretary, which contained all the essentials for writing. Canolles opened it, took therefrom pen, ink, and paper, placed them upon a table, moved the table as near as possible to the bed, asked permission to be seated, as if Claire were still in his eyes Madame la Princesse, and wrote the following despatch to Monsieur de Mazarin:—

"MONSEIGNEUR,—I arrived at the château of Chantilly at
nine o'clock in the evening; you will see that I travelled with
all diligence, as I had the honor to take leave of your Eminence
at half-past six.
"I found the two princesses in bed,—the princess dowager
quite seriously ill, Madame la Princesse tired out after hunting
all day.
"According to your Eminence's instructions I waited upon
their Highnesses, who immediately dismissed all their guests,
and I am at this moment keeping watch upon Madame la
Princesse and her son."

"And her son," Canolles repeated, turning to the viscountess. "The devil! that sounds like a lie, and yet I would prefer not to lie."

"Have no fear," rejoined Claire, laughing; "if you haven't seen my son yet, you shall see him very soon."

"And her son," resumed Canolles, echoing her laugh.

"I have the honor of writing this letter to your Eminence
in Madame la Princesse's bedroom, sitting by her bedside."

He signed his name, and, having respectfully asked Claire's permission, pulled a bell-cord. A valet de chambre answered the bell.

"Call my servant," said Canolles; "and when he is in the antechamber inform me."

Within five minutes the baron was informed that Monsieur Castorin was waiting.

"Take this letter," said Canolles, "and carry it to the officer in command of my two hundred men; bid him send an express to Paris with it."

"But, Monsieur le Baron," rejoined Castorin, who looked upon such an errand in the middle of the night as one of the most disagreeable things imaginable, "I thought that I told you that Monsieur Pompée had engaged me to take service with Madame la Princesse."

"Very good; I transmit this order to you on behalf of Madame la Princesse.—Will not your Highness deign to confirm what I say?" he added, turning toward the bed. "You are aware how important it is that this letter be delivered at once."

"Go," said the spurious princess, with a majestic accent and gesture.

Castorin bowed to the ground and left the room.

"Now," said Claire, holding out both her little hands imploringly to Canolles, "you will leave me, will you not?"

"Pardon me; but your son, madame?"

"True," replied Claire, with a smile; "you shall see him."

The words were hardly out of her mouth when some one scratched at the door, as the custom was at that time. It was Cardinal de Richelieu, influenced, doubtless, by his love for cats, who introduced this style of knocking. During his long reign people scratched at Monsieur de Richelieu's door; afterwards at Monsieur de Chavigny's, who was entitled to succeed him in this regard, were it only as his natural heir; and, lastly, at Monsieur de Mazarin's. Therefore they might well scratch at Madame la Princesse's door.

"They are coming," said Madame de Cambes.

"'T is well. I resume my official character."

He moved the table away and the chair, put on his hat, and stood in a respectful attitude, four steps from the princess's bed.

"Come in," said Claire.

Thereupon the stateliest procession imaginable filed into the room. There were ladies' in waiting, chamberlains, functionaries of all grades,—the whole ordinary retinue of the princess.

"Madame," said the first valet de chambre, "Monseigneur le Duc d'Enghien has been awakened. He can now receive his Majesty's messenger."

Canolles' eyes, as he looked at Madame de Cambes, said as plainly as his voice could have done:—

"Is this in accordance with our agreement?"

This look, eloquent with the entreaty of a heart in distress, was perfectly understood, and in gratitude, doubtless, for all that Canolles had done,—perhaps in some measure to gratify the love for mischief which is invariably hidden in the depths of the best woman's heart,—

"Bring Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien hither," said Claire; "monsieur will see my son in my presence."

They hastened to obey, and a moment later the young prince was led into the room.

We have seen that, while he was watching every detail of the last preparations for Madame la Princesse's departure, Canolles saw the young prince playing and running about, but did not see his face. He did, however, notice his costume, which was a simple hunting-suit. He thought, therefore, that it could not be in his honor that he was arrayed in the magnificent costume in which he now saw him. His former idea, that the prince had gone with his mother, became almost a certainty; but he gazed at the heir of the illustrious Prince de Condé for some time in silence, and an imperceptible smile played about his lips, although his demeanor was no less respectful than before.

"I am too happy," he said, with a low bow, "to be vouchsafed the honor of presenting my respects to Monseigneur le Duc d'Enghien."

Madame de Cambes, upon whose face the child's great wondering eyes were fixed, motioned to him to bow; and as it seemed to her that the air with which Canolles was following the scene was too scornful by half, she said, with a malicious deliberation which made the baron shudder, "My son, this gentleman is Monsieur de Canolles, sent hither by his Majesty. Give Monsieur de Canolles your hand to kiss."

At that command Pierrot, who had been taken in charge and drilled by Lenet, as he had agreed, put out a hand which he had had neither the time nor the means to transform into a gentleman's hand, and Canolles had no choice but to bestow, amid the stifled laughter of the spectators, a kiss upon that hand, which one less skilled in such matters than he would have had no difficulty in identifying as anything but an aristocratic member.

"Ah! Madame de Cambes!" muttered Canolles, "you shall pay me for that kiss!" And he bowed respectfully to Pierrot in acknowledgment of the honor done him. Realizing that after this trial, which was the last upon the programme, it was impossible for him to remain longer in a woman's bedroom, he turned toward the bed and said:—

"My duties for this evening are fulfilled, and it remains for me to ask your permission to retire."

"Go, monsieur," said Claire; "you see that we are very quiet here, so that nothing need disturb the tranquillity of your slumbers."

"Before I retire I venture to solicit a very great boon, madame."

"What might it be?" asked Madame de Cambes, uneasily, for the baron's tone indicated that he was planning to take revenge upon her.

"To grant me the same favor that I have received from the prince your son."

The viscountess was fairly caught. It was impossible to refuse an officer in the king's service the formal favor he thus solicited in public, and Madame de Cambes extended her trembling hand to Canolles.

He walked toward the bed as he might have walked toward the throne of a queen, took by the ends of the fingers the hand that was held out to him, knelt upon one knee, and imprinted upon the soft, white, trembling flesh a long kiss, which all the bystanders attributed to profound respect, and which the viscountess alone recognized as the equivalent of an ardent loving embrace.

"You promised me, you swore, indeed," said Canolles in an undertone, as he rose, "not to leave the château without informing me. I rely upon your promise and your oath."

"You may rely upon them, monsieur," said Claire, falling back upon her pillow, almost in a swoon.

Canolles, through whose whole being her tone sent a thrill of joy, tried to read in his fair prisoner's eyes confirmation of the hope her tone gave him. But those eyes were hermetically closed.

Canolles reflected that locked caskets are the ones which contain the most precious treasures, and he left the room with paradise in his heart.

To tell how our gentleman passed that night; to tell how his sleep and his waking were one long dream, during which he lived over and over again in his mind all the details of the chimerical adventure which had placed in his keeping the most precious treasure that a miser could ever hide away beneath the wings of his heart; to tell of the plans he devised for making the future subservient to the needs of his love and the whims of his imagination; to set forth the arguments that he used to convince himself that he was doing what he ought,—would be an utter impossibility; for folly is a wearisome thing to any other mind than a fool's.

Canolles fell asleep very late, if the feverish delirium which alternated with his waking moments can be called sleep; and yet the dawn had scarcely whitened the tops of the poplar-trees, and had not descended to the tranquil surface of the lovely ponds, where sleep the water-lilies, whose flowers open only in the sunlight, when he leaped out of bed, and, dressing himself in haste, went down into the garden. His first visit was to the wing occupied by the princess; his first glance at the window of her apartment. Either the princess was not yet asleep, or she was already awake, for a light, too bright to be produced by a mere night-lamp, shone through the closely drawn damask curtains. Canolles stopped short at the sight, which undoubtedly caused a number of insane conjectures to pass through his mind at the same instant, and, abandoning his tour of inspection, he stepped behind the pedestal of a statue which hid him from view; there, alone with his chimera, he began that everlasting dialogue of true lovers, who see the beloved object in all the poetic emanations of nature.

The baron had been at his observatory for half an hour, or thereabout, and was gazing with unspeakable bliss at the curtains which any other than he would have passed indifferently by, when a window upon the gallery opened, and the honest face of Master Pompée appeared in the opening. Everything connected with the viscountess possessed the deepest interest for Canolles; so he turned his gaze away from the seductive curtains, and thought he could detect a desire on Pompée's part to establish communication with him by signs. At first Canolles was not sure that the signs were addressed to him, and looked about to discover if any other person was near; but Pompée, observing his uncertainty, accompanied his motions with a whistle, which would have been a decidedly unseemly method for a squire to adopt to attract the attention of the ambassador of his Majesty the King of France, had it not had an excuse in the shape of a small white object almost imperceptible to any other eyes than those of a lover, who immediately recognized in the white object a folded paper.

"A note!" thought Canolles? "she's writing to me. What does that mean?"

He drew near, trembling with apprehension, although his first sentiment was exceeding joy; but there always is a certain tincture of dread in the great joys of a lover, which is perhaps its chiefest charm: to be sure of one's happiness is to be happy no longer.

As Canolles approached, Pompée ventured to expose the paper more and more, and at last he put out his arm while Canolles held his hat. The two men understood each other to admiration, as we see; the former let the note fall, and the other caught it very skilfully, and then darted into a clump of trees to read it at his leisure, while Pompée, fearful of taking cold, no doubt, quickly closed the window.

But one does not read like that the first note he has ever received from the woman of his choice, especially when there can be no reason for its unforeseen arrival, unless it be to aim a blow at his happiness. For what could the viscountess have to say to him if there had been no change in the programme agreed upon between them the night before? The note therefore must of necessity contain some distressing news.

Canolles was so thoroughly convinced of this that he did not even put the paper to his lips as a lover would ordinarily do in the like circumstances. On the contrary, he turned it over and over with increasing dread. However, it must be opened at some time, so he summoned all his courage, broke the seal, and read as follows:—

"Monsieur,—I hope you will agree with me that to remain longer in our present position is altogether impossible. It must be excessively disagreeable to be looked upon as a detestable spy by the whole household; on the other hand I have reason to fear that, if I receive you more affably than Madame la Princesse would be likely to do in my place, we shall be suspected of playing a comedy, which would inevitably end in the loss of my reputation."

Canolles wiped his brow; his presentiments had not deceived him. With the daylight, the great banisher of visions, all his golden dreams disappeared. He shook his head, heaved a sigh, and read on:—

"Pretend to discover the stratagem to which we resorted; there is a very simple method of making that discovery, and I will myself furnish the materials if you will promise to do as I ask. You see that I do not seek to conceal how much I rely upon you. If you will do as I ask I will send you a portrait of myself, upon which are my crest and my name. You can say that you found it on one of your night rounds, and that you discovered in that way that I am not the princess.

"Need I say that you have my permission, if indeed you attach any value to the portrait, to keep it as a token of my heartfelt, undying gratitude to you, if you take your departure this morning?

"Leave us without seeing me again, if possible, and you will take with you all my gratitude, while I shall always remember you as one of the noblest and most loyal gentlemen I have ever known."

Canolles read the note through once more, and stood as if turned to stone. Whatever favor a letter of dismissal may contain, no matter how sweet the honey in which a farewell or a refusal is clothed, refusal, farewell, dismissal, are none the less cruel to the heart of a lover. The portrait was a lovely thing to have, no doubt about that; but the motive for offering it detracted greatly from its value. And then, of what use is a portrait when the original is at hand, when one holds her fast and need not let her go?

True; but Canolles, who did not hesitate to risk incurring the wrath of the queen and Mazarin, trembled at the thought of Madame de Cambes' frown.

And yet, how the woman had made sport of him, first of all on the road, then at Chantilly, by taking the place of Madame la Princesse, and again, only the night before, by giving him a hope which she snatched away again in the morning! But, of all her deceptions, this was the most heartless. On the road she did not know him, and simply got rid of an inconvenient companion, nothing more. In taking Madame de Condé's place, she obeyed orders, and played the part assigned her by her suzerain,—she could not do otherwise; but this time she did know him, and after she had expressed her appreciation of his self-sacrifice, and had twice uttered that we which had touched the deepest chords of his heart, to retrace her steps, disavow her kindly feeling, deny her gratitude, in a word, write such a letter as that, was, in Canolles' sight, worse than cruelty,—it was almost mockery. So he lost his temper, and raged inwardly, heedless of the fact that behind those curtains—the lights having been all extinguished as the daylight rendered them useless—a fair spectator, well hidden by the heavy hangings, looked on at the pantomime of his despair, and shared it perchance.

"Yes, yes," he thought, and accompanied the thought with expressive gestures,—"yes, 't is a dismissal in due form, a commonplace ending to a great event, a poetic hope changed to brutal disappointment. But I will not submit to the ridicule she proposes to heap upon me. I prefer her hatred to this pretended gratitude she prates of. Ah! yes, I imagine myself relying upon her promise now! As well rely upon the constancy of the wind and the tranquillity of the ocean. Ah! madame, madame," he continued, turning toward the window, "you have escaped me twice; but I give you my word that if I ever have another such opportunity you shall not escape me the third time."

With that, Canolles returned to his apartment, intending to dress and gain access to the viscountess, though he were obliged to resort to force. But upon glancing at the clock, he discovered that it was barely seven. No one had yet risen in the château.

Canolles dropped into an arm-chair and closed his eyes, to collect his thoughts, and, if possible, drive away the phantoms that were dancing about him; he opened them again at short intervals to consult his watch.

Eight o'clock struck and the château began to show signs of life. Canolles waited another half-hour with infinite impatience; at last he could contain himself no longer, but went downstairs and accosted Pompée, who was proudly taking the air in the main court-yard, surrounded by lackeys to whom he was describing his campaigns in Picardy under the late king.

"You are her Highness's intendant?" said Canolles, as if he then saw poor Pompée for the first time.

"Yes, monsieur," replied the wondering squire.

"Be good enough to inform her Highness that I crave the honor of paying my respects to her."

"But, monsieur, her Highness—"

"Has arisen."

"But—"

"Go!"

"But I thought that monsieur's departure—"

"My departure will depend upon the interview I propose to have with her Highness."

"I say that because I have no orders from my mistress."

"And I say this," retorted Canolles, "because I have an order from the king."

As he spoke he majestically clapped his hand upon the pocket of his doublet,—a gesture which he adopted as the most satisfactory in its results of all those he had employed since his arrival.

But even as he executed this coup d'état, our ambassador felt that his courage was deserting him. In fact, since the preceding night, his importance had greatly diminished. Twelve hours, or very nearly that, had elapsed since Madame la Princesse left Chantilly; doubtless she had travelled all night; she must therefore be twenty or twenty-five leagues away. Let Canolles and his men make what speed they might, they could not hope to overtake her; and if they should overtake her, what assurance was there that the escort of a hundred gentlemen with which she set out was not ere this increased to three or four hundred devoted adherents? To be sure, Canolles might still, as he said the night before, die in the performance of his duty; but had he the right to lead to certain death the men who accompanied him, and thus force them to pay the bloody penalty of his amorous caprice? Madame de Cambes, if he had been in error as to her feeling for him, if her distress was mere comedy,—Madame de Cambes might then openly make sport of him; he would have to endure the jeering of the lackeys and of the soldiers hidden in the forest; the wrath of Mazarin and the queen; and worse than all, his new-born passion would be nipped in the bud, for never did woman love a man whom she designed, though but for an instant, to make ridiculous.

As he was turning these thoughts over and over in his mind, Pompée returned, with lowered crest, to say that his mistress was awaiting him.

On this occasion all ceremony was done away with; the viscountess received him in a small salon adjoining her apartment, fully dressed, and standing. Traces of a sleepless night, which she had tried in vain to efface, were plainly visible upon her charming features. A slight dark circle about her eyes was an especially eloquent indication that those eyes had hardly been closed during the night.

"You see, monsieur," she began, without giving him time to speak, "that I comply with your wish, but in the hope, I confess, that this interview will be the last, and that you will reciprocate by complying with mine."

"Forgive me, madame," said Canolles; "but after what took place between us last evening, I made bold to hope that your demands would be less severe, and I was confident that, after what I had done for you,—for you alone, for I do not know Madame de Condé,—you would deign to endure my further presence at Chantilly."

"Yes, monsieur, I confess that on the impulse of the moment—in the perplexity necessarily consequent upon my present position—the thought of the great sacrifice you were making for me, and the interests of Madame la Princesse, which demanded that I should gain time for her, drew from my lips certain words which accorded but ill with my thought. But during this long night I have reflected; it is out of the question that both of us should remain longer at the château."

"Out of the question, madame!" said Canolles. "Do you forget that everything is possible for him who speaks in the king's name?"

"Monsieur de Canolles, I hope that before all else you are a gentleman, and that you will not take unfair advantage of the position in which my devotion to her Highness has placed me."

"Madame," rejoined Canolles, "before all else I am a madman. Mon Dieu! you must have seen it, for no one but a madman could do what I have done. So take pity on my madness, madame; do not send me away, I implore you!"

"Then I will leave the place, monsieur; yes, I will bring you back to your duty, in spite of yourself. We will see if you will resort to force to stop me, if you will expose us both to public scandal. No, no, monsieur," the viscountess continued, in a tone which Canolles had not heard before. "No, you will see upon reflection that you cannot remain forever at Chantilly; you will remember that you are expected elsewhere."

This last phrase cast a bright light upon Canolles' perplexity. It recalled to his mind the scene at Biscarros' inn, and Madame de Cambes' discovery of his liaison with Nanon, and everything was made clear.

This insomnia was caused by memories of the past, not by present anxiety. This determination of the morning, which led her to avoid Canolles, was not the result of reflection, but was a manifestation of jealousy.

For a moment there was silence between them, as they stood there face to face; but during that silence both were listening to the thoughts which whispered with the beating of their hearts.

"Jealous!" Canolles was saying; "jealous! Ah! now I understand it all. Yes, yes, she would make sure that I love her enough to sacrifice all other love! This is a test!"

Meanwhile Madame de Cambes communed thus with herself:—

"I am simply a passing fancy for Monsieur de Canolles. He met me on the road just when he was obliged to leave Guyenne, and followed me as the traveller follows a jack-o'-lantern; but his heart is in that little house among the trees, whither he was going the evening that I met him. It is impossible for me to keep by my side a man who loves another, and whom I might perchance be weak enough to love myself, if I were to be longer in his company. Oh! not only should I betray my honor, but the interests of Madame la Princesse, were I to sink so low as to love the agent of her persecutors."

As if replying to her own thoughts she cried abruptly:—

"No, no, you must go, monsieur: go, or I go!"

"You forget, madame, that I have your promise not to leave the château without informing me of your purpose."

"Very well, monsieur, I now inform you that I propose to leave Chantilly instantly."

"And do you imagine that I will allow it?"

"What!" cried the viscountess; "you will detain me by force?"

"Madame, I know not what I may do, but I do know that it is impossible for me to part from you."

"Then I am your prisoner?"

"You are a woman whom I have already lost twice, and whom I do not propose to lose a third time."

"Aha! violence?"

"Yes, madame, violence," replied Canolles, "if there is no other way to keep you."

"Oh! what extreme felicity," cried Madame de Cambes, "to detain by force a woman who shrieks, who demands her freedom, who does not love you, who detests you!"

Canolles started back, and made a rapid mental effort to distinguish between the words and the thought that prompted them. He realized that the moment had come to stake his all upon a single cast.

"Madame," said he, "the words that you have just uttered, with such evident sincerity that there is no mistaking their meaning, have removed all uncertainty from my mind. You shrieking, you a slave! I detain a woman who does not love me, who detests me! Nay, nay, madame, have no fear; that shall never be. I did think, judging from my own happiness in being with you, that you would perhaps endure my presence; I hoped that, after I had thrown away my reputation, my peace of mind, my future, mayhap my honor, you would reward me for this sacrifice by the gift of a few brief hours, which I am fated never to enjoy. All this might have been had you loved me,—yes, even had I been indifferent to you; for you are kind of heart, and would have done for compassion's sake what another would have done for love. But I find that I have not mere indifference to reckon with, but hatred; that puts a different face upon the matter, as you say. I crave your pardon, madame, for failing to realize that one who loves so madly could be hated in return. It is for you to remain here, queen, mistress, and free in this château as everywhere; it is for me to withdraw, and I withdraw accordingly. In ten minutes you will be fully at liberty once more. Adieu, madame, adieu, forever!"

And Canolles, whose despair, assumed at first, had become quite genuine and distressful toward the close of his address, saluted Madame de Cambes and turned upon his heel, groping blindly for the door, which he could not find, and repeating the word, "Adieu! adieu!" with an accent of such profound melancholy that, coming from the heart, it went straight to the heart. Unfeigned affliction has a voice of its own as truly as the tempest.

Madame de Cambes did not anticipate this unquestioning obedience on the part of Canolles; she had marshalled her forces for a struggle, not for a victory, and her calculations were all set at naught by this combination of humility and love. As the baron was walking toward the door, putting out his arms at random, and giving utterance to something very like a sob, he suddenly felt that a hand was laid upon his shoulder with a most significant pressure; it did not touch him, simply, it stopped him.

He turned his head. She was still standing in front of him. Her arm still rested gracefully upon his shoulder, and the dignified expression which her face wore an instant before had melted away in a lovely smile.

"Well, well, monsieur!" said she, "is this the way you obey the queen? You would go hence when your orders bid you stay, traitor that you are!"

Canolles with a sharp cry fell upon his knees, and pressed his burning brow against the hands she held out to him.

"Oh! I shall die with joy!" he exclaimed.

"Alas! do not be overjoyful yet," said the viscountess; "for my object in stopping you is simply that we might not part thus, that you might not go hence with the idea that I am an ingrate, that you might voluntarily give back the promise I gave you, that you might come to look upon me as a friend, at least, since the fact that we belong to opposite parties will prevent our ever being anything more to each other."

"Oh! mon Dieu!" cried Canolles, "am I deceived again? You do not love me?"

"Let us not talk about our sentiments, baron; rather let us talk of the risk we both run by remaining here. Go yourself, or allow me to go; it must be."

"What do you say, madame?"

"The truth. Leave me here; return to Paris; tell Mazarin, tell the queen what has happened. I will assist you to the best of my ability; but go, go!"

"Must I tell you again," cried Canolles, "that to leave you would be death to me?"

"No, no, you will not die, for you will retain the hope that in happier days we shall meet again."

"Chance has thrown me in your way, madame, or, rather, has placed you in my way twice already; but chance will have grown weary in well-doing, and if I leave you now I shall never see you again."

"Then I will seek you out."

"Oh! madame, ask me to die for you; death is an instant's suffering, and all is over. But do not ask me to leave you again. At the bare thought my heart is breaking. Why, consider, pray, that I have hardly seen you, hardly spoken with you."

"Well, then, if I allow you to remain to-day, if you are at liberty to see me and talk to me throughout the day, will you be content? Tell me."

"I make no promises."

"Nor I, if that is so. But, as I did some time since promise to give you due notice of my departure, know that I leave this place an hour hence."

"Must I do whatever you wish? Must I obey you in every point? Must I set aside my own volition and follow yours blindly? If I must do all that, be content. You have before you a slave, ready to obey. Command me, madame, command me."

Claire gave the baron her hand, and said, in her softest and most winning voice:—

"I ask a new promise in exchange for mine; if I do not leave your side from now until nine o'clock this evening, will you go at nine o'clock?"

"I swear it."

"Come, then; the sky is blue and gives promise of a beautiful day; there is dew upon the grass, sweet perfume in the air, and balm among the trees. Holé! Pompée."

The worthy intendant, who had doubtless been instructed to remain outside the door, made his appearance at once.

"My saddle-horses," said Madame de Cambes, assuming her princely expression; "I will ride this morning to the ponds, and return by the farm, where I will breakfast. You will accompany me, Monsieur le Baron," she continued; "it is a part of your duties, as you have received her Majesty's commands never to lose sight of me."

A suffocating cloud of joy blinded the baron, and enveloped him, like the masses of vapor in which the immortal gods of old were carried up to heaven; he went where he was led, unresistingly, almost without volition; he was intoxicated, he was mad. Soon, amid a charming wood, through shadowy avenues, where hanging branches softly swept across his brow, he opened once again his eyes to things of earth. He was on foot, his heart oppressed by pleasure so intense that it was well-nigh pain, his hand in hers, and she as pale, as silent, and as happy, too, as he.

Behind them Pompée stalked along, so near that he could see, so far away that he could not hear.

---

III.

This blissful day came to an end at last, as every dream must do; the hours had passed like seconds to the thrice happy gentleman, and yet it seemed to him as if enough memorable incidents were crowded into that one day to fill three ordinary lives. Every avenue in the park was enriched with the memory of a word or a smile from the viscountess; a look, a gesture, a finger laid upon the lip, everything had its meaning. As they stepped aboard the boat she pressed his hand; when they stepped ashore again she leaned upon his arm; as they walked along by the park wall, she was tired and sat down; and again and again, as a thrill of pleasure swept like a lightning flash before the young man's eyes, the landscape, lighted up by a fantastic gleam, was indelibly imprinted on his mind in its least details.

Canolles was not to leave the viscountess during the day; at breakfast she invited him to dinner, at dinner she invited him to supper.

Amid all the pomp which the pretended princess displayed in her reception of the king's messenger, Canolles could discern the winning attentions of the woman who loves. He forgot the valets, etiquette, the world; he even forgot the promise he had given to take his departure, and fancied himself installed for a blissful eternity in this terrestrial paradise, of which he would be the Adam, and Madame de Cambes the Eve.

But when night fell, when the supper came to an end, after passing off, like all the other incidents of that day, in ineffable bliss, when a maid of honor had duly introduced Monsieur Pierrot, still disguised as the Duc d'Enghien, who seized the opportunity to eat as much as four princes of the blood together would have done, when the clock began to strike, and Madame de Cambes, glancing up at it, made sure that it was about to strike ten times, she said, with a sigh:—

"Now it is time."

"Time for what?" rejoined Canolles, trying to smile, and to ward off a great disaster by a jest.

"Time to keep the promise you gave me."

"Ah! madame," said Canolles, sadly, "you forget nothing, do you?"

"Perhaps I might have forgotten, like yourself; but here is something that refreshes my memory;" and she took from her pocket a letter that was handed her just as they took their seats at the table.

"From whom is that letter?" queried Canolles.

"From Madame la Princesse, who bids me join her."

"I understand that this is a mere pretext! I am grateful to you for showing me such consideration."

"Make no mistake, Monsieur de Canolles," rejoined the viscountess, taking no pains to conceal her sadness. "Had I not received this letter, I should have reminded you of your promise at the proper time, just as I have done now. Do you think that the people about us can much longer avoid detecting the understanding between us? Our relations, you will agree, are not those of a persecuted princess with her persecutor. But if this separation is so painful to you as you pretend, let me tell you, Monsieur le Baron, that it rests with you to make it unnecessary that we should separate."

"Say what you mean! oh, say!" cried Canolles.

"Do you not guess?"

"Yes, madame, I do, indeed; I cannot be mistaken. You mean to suggest that I should espouse the cause of Madame la Princesse."

"She speaks of it herself in this letter," said Madame de Cambes, eagerly.

"I am glad that the idea did not originate with you, and I thank you for the embarrassment with which you broached the subject. Not that my conscience revolts at the thought of following this or that party; no, I have no convictions; indeed, who, save those personally interested, have convictions in this war? When the sword has once left the scabbard, what care I whether the blow comes from one side or another? I do not know the court, nor do I know the princes; with an independent fortune and without ambition, I have no expectations from either party. I am an officer, and that's the end of it."

"In that case you will consent to go with me?"

"No."

"But why not, pray, if things are as you say?"

"Because you would esteem me less."

"Is that the only obstacle?"

"My word for it."

"Then you need have no fear."

"You don't yourself believe what you are saying now," rejoined Canolles, shaking his finger at her with a smile. "A turncoat is the same thing as a traitor; the first word is a little softer, but they are synonymous."

"Ah, well! perhaps you are right," said Madame de Cambes, "and I will urge you no further. If you had been in any ordinary position I would have tried to win you over to the cause of the princes; but as an envoy of the king, intrusted with a confidential mission by her Majesty the queen regent and the first minister of the crown, honored with the good-will of Monsieur le Duc d'Épernon, who, notwithstanding the suspicions I entertained at first, is your very zealous patron, so I am told—"

Canolles blushed.

"I will say no more on that subject, but listen to me, baron; we do not part forever, be sure; I have a presentiment that we shall meet again."

"Where?" asked Canolles.

"I have no idea; but meet again we certainly shall."

Canolles sadly shook his head.

"I dare not count upon it, madame," said he; "there is war between us, and that is too great an obstacle when, at the same time, there is no love."

"Pray, do you count this day as nothing?" asked the viscountess, in a soul-thrilling tone.

"It is the only day that I am sure that I have lived since I came into the world."

"Then you see that you are ungrateful."

"Grant me a second day like this one—"

"I cannot; I must leave Chantilly to-night."

"I don't ask it for to-morrow, nor for the day after to-morrow; I simply ask you for some day in the future. Select whatever time you choose, whatever place you choose, but give me a certainty to live upon; I should suffer too much if I had naught but a hope."

"Where shall you go upon leaving me?"

"To Paris, to report upon the success of my mission."

"And then?"

"To the Bastille, perhaps."

"But assuming that you do not go there?"

"I shall return to Libourne, where my regiment should be."

"And I to Bordeaux, where I expect to find Madame la Princesse. Do you know any out-of-the-way village on the road from Bordeaux to Libourne?"

"I know one, the memory of which is almost as dear to me as that of Chantilly."

"Jaulnay?" queried the viscountess, with a smile.

"Jaulnay," echoed Canolles.

"Very well; I shall need four days to go to Jaulnay; it is now Tuesday. I will stop there all day on Sunday."

"Oh! thanks, thanks!" cried Canolles, pressing against his lips a hand which Madame de Cambes had not the courage to withdraw.

"Now," said she, after a moment's pause, "we must play out our little comedy to the end."

"Ah, yes, madame; the comedy which is to cover me with ridicule in the eyes of all Prance. But I have nothing to say; it was I who would have it so, it was I who—I cannot say selected the part that I play therein—but arranged the catastrophe which brings it to a close."

Madame de Cambes lowered her eyes.

"Now tell me what I have still to do," said Canolles, coolly; "I await your orders, and am ready for anything."

Claire was so deeply moved that Canolles could see the velvet folds of her dress rise and fall with the uneven, hurried beating of her heart.

"You are making a very great sacrifice for me, I know; but pray believe me when I say that my gratitude will live forever. Yes, you are about to incur disgrace at court for my sake, and to be severely censured. Monsieur, care nothing for that, I beg you, if it affords you any pleasure to know that you have made me happy."

"I will try, madame."

"Believe me, baron," continued Madame de Cambes, "the bitter grief which I read upon your face causes me no less bitter remorse. It may be that others would recompense you more fully than I; but, monsieur, a recompense accorded so readily would not worthily pay for your self-sacrifice."

As she spoke, Claire hung her head with a sigh.

"Is that all you have to say to me?"

"Stay," said the viscountess, taking from her breast a portrait which she handed to Canolles; "take this portrait, and at every pang that this unhappy affair causes you, look at it, and say to yourself that you suffer for her whose image is before you, and that every such pang is paid for in regret."

"Is that all?"

"In esteem."

"Is that all?"

"In sympathy."

"Ah! madame, one word more!" cried Canolles. "Why should it cost you so dear to make me altogether happy?"

Claire stepped quickly toward him, put out her hand, and opened her mouth to add:—

"In love."

But simultaneously with her mouth, the door was thrown open and the pseudo-captain of the guards appeared upon the threshold, accompanied by Pompée.

"I will finish at Jaulnay," said the viscountess.

"Your sentence, or your thought?"

"Both; one always expresses the other."

"Madame," said the captain of the guards, "your Highness's carriage is waiting."

"Feign astonishment," said Claire, in an undertone.

"Where does your Highness propose to go?" he asked, with a smile of pity for his own plight.

"I am going away."

"But does your Highness forget that I am instructed by her Majesty not to leave you for an instant?"

"Monsieur, your mission is at an end."

"What does this mean?"

"That I am not her Highness, Madame la Princesse de Condé, but Madame la Vicomtesse de Cambes, her first maid of honor. Madame la Princesse left Chantilly last evening, and I go to join her."

Canolles did not stir. It was plainly most distasteful to him to continue to play this comedy before an audience of lackeys.

Madame de Cambes, to encourage him, bestowed one of her sweetest glances upon him; that glance restored his courage in some measure.

"So the king has been deceived," he said. "And where is Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien?"

"I have given orders that Pierrot return to his flower-beds," said a grave voice at the door.

It was the voice of the princess dowager, who was standing near the door, supported by two of her tire-women.

"Return to Paris, to Mantes, to the court, in a word, wherever it may be; your mission here is at an end. You will say to the king that the persecuted have resorted to stratagem, which renders fruitless the use of force. You are at liberty, however, to remain at Chantilly, to stand guard over me, who have not left, and shall not leave the château, because such is not my design. With this, Monsieur le Baron, I take my leave of you."

Canolles, red with shame, could hardly summon strength to bend his head, as he glanced at the viscountess, and murmured reproachfully:—

"O, madame! madame!"

She understood the glance and heard the words.

"I crave your Highness's permission," she said, "to play the part of Madame la Princesse one moment more. I desire to thank Monsieur le Baron de Canolles, in the name of his illustrious hosts who have left this château, for the respect he has shown, and the great delicacy he has exhibited in the performance of so difficult a mission. I venture to believe, madame, that your Highness has the same opinion, and to hope, therefore, that you will add your acknowledgments to mine."

The dowager was touched by these earnest words, and it may be that her profound sagacity suggested to her some part of this new secret grafted upon the old; so it was that her voice was not entirely free from emotion as she uttered the following words:—

"For all that you have done against us, monsieur, oblivion; for all that you have done for my family, gratitude."

Canolles knelt upon one knee at the feet of the princess, who gave him that hand to kiss whereon Henri IV. had imprinted so many kisses.

It was the last act of the play, it was an irrevocable dismissal. There was nothing left for Canolles to do but to take his leave. And so he withdrew to his apartment, and lost no time in writing to Mazarin the most despairing report imaginable; he preferred not to be present to suffer the consequences of the first outburst of anger. That done he passed out through the servants of the château, with some apprehension that he might be insulted by them, to the court-yard, where his horse awaited him.

As he was about to put his foot in the stirrup, these words were uttered by an imperious voice:—

"Do honor to the envoy of his Majesty, the king, our master!"

Thereupon every head was bent before Canolles, who, with a low bow toward the window at which the princess was standing, drove his spurs into his horse, and disappeared, with head erect.

Castorin, awakened from the seductive dream which he owed to Pompée, the false intendant, followed his master with lowered crest.

---

IV.

It is full time to return to one of the most important personages of this narrative, whom we shall find riding an excellent horse along the road from Paris to Bordeaux, with five companions, whose eyes sparkled at every sound that came from a bag filled with gold crowns, hanging at Ferguzon's saddle-bow. The melody rejoiced and refreshed the little troop, as the music of the drum and fife imparts renewed life to the soldier on the march.

"Never mind, never mind," one of the men was saying; "ten thousand livres is a pretty little sum."

"You might say," rejoined Ferguzon, "that it is a magnificent sum, if it owed nothing to anybody; but it owes a company to Madame la Princesse. Nimium satis est, as the ancients used to say; which may be translated thus: 'Nothing less than too much is enough. Now, my dear Barrabas, we haven't that desirable enough which is equivalent to too much."

"How much it costs to appear to be an honest man!" said Cauvignac; "all that we took from the royal tax-gatherer has gone into equipments, doublets, and trimming. We cut as fine a figure as any nobleman, and we carry luxury so far as to have purses; to be sure, there's nothing in them. Oh, appearances!"

"Speak for us, captain, and not for yourself," said Barrabas. "You have the purse and ten thousand livres to boot."

"My good fellow," said Cauvignac, "did you not hear, or did you misunderstand what Ferguzon just said touching our obligation to Madame la Princesse? I am not of those who promise one thing and do another. Monsieur Lenet paid over ten thousand livres to me to raise a company, and if I don't raise it may the devil fly away with me! On the day when it is raised he will owe me forty thousand more. When that time comes, if he doesn't pay the forty thousand livres we will see."

"With ten thousand livres!" cried four satirical voices in chorus; for Ferguzon, whose confidence in his leader's resources was unbounded, seemed to be the only one of the troop convinced that Cauvignac would attain the promised result; "with ten thousand livres you will raise a company?"

"Yes," said Cauvignac, "when some one thinks fit to add something to it."

"Who is there, pray, to add anything to it?" asked a voice.

"Not I," said Ferguzon.

"Who, then?" Barrabas asked.

"Pardieu! the first comer. Stay, I see a man yonder on the road. You will see—"

"I understand," said Ferguzon.

"Is that all?" queried Cauvignac.

"And admire."

"Yes," said one of the horsemen, drawing nigh Cauvignac, "yes, I understand that you can always be depended on to keep your promises, captain; but we may lose by being too honest. To-day we are necessary; but if the company is raised to-morrow, officers in the confidence of the princes will be assigned to it, and we, who have had all the trouble of raising it, shall be dismissed."

"You are an idiot, in five letters, my dear Carrotel, and this isn't the first time I have told you so," said Cauvignac. "The pitiful logic you have just perpetrated deprives you of the rank I proposed to give you in the company; for it is evident that we shall be the six officers of this nucleus of an army. I should have appointed you sub-lieutenant at the outset, Carrotel; now you will be only a sergeant. Thanks to the nonsense you just heard, Barrabas, you, who have held your tongue, will hold that position until, Ferguzon having been hanged, you are promoted to the lieutenancy by right of seniority. But let us not lose sight of my first recruit, whom I see yonder."

"Have you any idea who the man is, captain?" Ferguzon asked.

"Not the slightest."

"He should be a tradesman; he wears a black cloak."

"Are you sure?"

"Look when the wind raises it; do you see?"

"If he wears a black cloak, he's a wealthy citizen; so much the better. We are recruiting for the service of the princes, and it is important that the company should be made up of good men. If it were for that wretch of a Mazarin, anything would be good enough; but for the princes, deuce take me!—Ferguzon, I have an idea that my company will do me honor, as Falstaff says."

The whole troop spurred forward to overtake the citizen, who was riding peaceably along in the middle of the road.

When the worthy man, who was mounted upon a sleek mule, observed the magnificently arrayed horsemen galloping up behind him, he rode off to the side of the road with due respect, and saluted Cauvignac.

"He is well-mannered," said that worthy; "that's a great point. "He doesn't know the military salute, but we will teach him that."

He returned the salute, then rode up beside the traveller.

"Monsieur," he began, "be good enough to tell us if you love the king."

"Parbleu! yes," was the reply.

"Admirable!" said Cauvignac, rolling his eyes in delight. "And the queen?"

"The queen! I have the greatest veneration for her."

"Excellent! and Monsieur de Mazarin?"

"Monsieur de Mazarin is a great man, monsieur, and I admire him."

"Perfect! In that case, we have had the good fortune to fall in with a faithful servitor of his Majesty?"

"I pride myself upon it, monsieur."

"And are prepared to prove your zeal for him?"

"On every occasion."

"How luckily this comes about! such meetings as this never happen except on the high-road."

"What do you mean?" queried the tradesman, beginning to eye Cauvignac with some uneasiness.

"I mean, monsieur, that you must come with us."

The tradesman almost leaped out of his saddle in surprise and terror.

"Go with you! Whither, monsieur, in God's name?"

"I am not altogether sure, myself; wherever we go."

"Monsieur, I travel only with people whom I know."

"That is quite right, and shows you to be a prudent man; so I will proceed to tell you who we are."

The tradesman made a gesture, as if to say that he had already guessed. Cauvignac continued, without seeming to notice the gesture:—

"I am Roland de Cauvignac, captain of a company, which is not present, it is true, but is worthily represented by Louis-Gabriel Ferguzon, my lieutenant, by Georges-Guillaume Barrabas, my sub-lieutenant, by Zéphérin Carrotel, my sergeant, and by these two gentlemen, one of whom is my quartermaster and the other my sergeant-major. You know us now, monsieur," continued Cauvignac, with his most benign smile, "and I venture to hope that you feel no antipathy for us."

"But, monsieur, I have already served his Majesty in the urban guard, and I pay my taxes, tithes, and so forth, regularly."

"Very good, monsieur," rejoined Cauvignac; "and I do not propose to enlist you in his Majesty's service, but in that of Messieurs les Princes, whose unworthy representative you see before you."

"In the service of the princes, the king's enemies!" cried the honest fellow, more and more amazed; "then why did you ask me if I loved his Majesty?"

"Because, monsieur, if you did not love the king, if you had accused the queen or blasphemed against Monsieur de Mazarin, I should not have dreamed of disturbing you; in that case you would have been sacred to me as a brother."

"But, monsieur, I am not a slave; I am not a serf."

"No, monsieur, you are a soldier; that is to say, you have it in your power to become a captain like myself, or a marshal of France like Monsieur de Turenne."

"Monsieur, I have had a large amount of experience of courts in my life."

"Ah! so much the worse, monsieur, so much the worse! it's a wretched habit to get into, this going to law. I never did any of it myself; it may have been because I studied for the bar."

"But by having so many lawsuits I have learned the laws of the kingdom."

"There are great numbers of them. You know, monsieur, that from the Pandects of Justinian down to the decree of Parliament, which provided, apropos of the death of Maréchal d'Ancre, that no foreigner should ever be first minister of France, there have been eighteen thousand seven hundred and seventy-two laws, to say nothing of ordinances; but there are privileged brains which have an astounding memory; Pico della Mirandole spoke twelve languages at eighteen. What good has your knowledge of these laws ever done you, monsieur?"

"The good of knowing that people are not to be kidnapped on the high-road without warrant."

"I have such warrant, monsieur, and here it is."

"From Madame la Princesse?"

"From her Highness in person."

And Cauvignac respectfully raised his hat.

"Then there are two kings in France?" cried the tradesman.

"Even so, monsieur; that is why I do myself the honor of asking you to accord your preference to mine, and why I deem it my duty to enlist you in my service."

"Monsieur, I will appeal to the Parliament."

"There's a third king, and you will probably have occasion to serve it as well. Our politics are built upon broad lines! Forward, monsieur!"

"But it's impossible, monsieur; I have an appointment upon important business."

"Where?"

"At Orléans."

"With whom?"

"My attorney."

"What is the business?"

"It concerns certain financial transactions."

"The service of the State should be every man's first business, monsieur."

"Can't the State do without me?"

"We relied upon you, and we should miss you, in good sooth! However, if, as you say, money matters occasion your visit to Orléans—"

"Yes, monsieur, money matters."

"How much money is concerned?"

"Four thousand livres."

"Which you are going to receive?"

"No, which I am going to pay."

"To your attorney?"

"Even so, monsieur."

"On account of a lawsuit?"

"On account of a lawsuit lost."

"'Pon my word, this deserves consideration. Four thousand livres!"

"Four thousand livres."

"That is just the sum you would pay out in case Messieurs les Princes would consent that your place should be filled by a mercenary."

"Nonsense! I could procure a substitute for a hundred crowns."

"A substitute of your commanding appearance, a substitute who rides muleback with his toes turned out like you, a substitute who knows eighteen thousand seven hundred and seventy-two laws! Go to, monsieur! for an ordinary man a hundred crowns would certainly be enough; but if we are to be content with ordinary men, it's not worth while to enter into competition with the king. We need men of your merit, of your rank, of your stature. What the devil! don't cry yourself down; it seems to me that you are worth fully four thousand livres!"

"I see what you are coming at," cried the tradesman; "this is downright robbery with force and arms."

"Monsieur, you insult us," said Cauvignac, "and we would flay you alive by way of reparation for the insult, if we were less anxious to maintain the reputation of the adherents of the princes. No, monsieur; give me your four thousand livres, but do not look upon it as extortion, I beg; it is a necessity."

"Who will pay my attorney?"

"We will."

"You?"

"We."

"But will you bring me a receipt?"

"In due form."

"Signed by him?"

"Signed by him."

"That puts a different face on the matter."

"As you see. So you accept?"

"I must, as I can't do otherwise."

"Give us your attorney's address, then, and such other information as we can't do without."

"I told you that it was a judgment resulting from the loss of a lawsuit."

"Against whom?"

"Against a certain Biscarros, claimant, as heir of his wife, who was a native of Orléans."

"Attention!" said Ferguzon.

Cauvignac winked at him as if to say "Never fear, I am on the watch."

"Biscarros," he repeated; "isn't he an inn-keeper in the outskirts of Libourne?"

"Just so,—between Libourne and Saint-Martin-de-Cubzac."

"At the sign of the Golden Calf?"

"The same. Do you know him?"

"A little."

"The villain! to get judgment against me for a sum—"

"Which you didn't owe him?"

"Oh! yes. I owed it—but I hoped never to pay it."

"I understand; it's very hard."

"For that reason, I give you my word that I would much rather see the money in your hands than in his."

"If that is so, I think you will be content."

"But my receipt?"

"Come with us, and you shall have it in due form."

"How will you go to work to get it?"

"That's my affair."

They pursued their journey toward Orléans, where they arrived two hours later. The tradesman conducted his captors to the inn nearest his attorney's office. It was a frightful den, with the appropriate name of the Dove of the Ark.

"Now," said he, "what are we to do? I would be very glad not to part from my four thousand livres except as against a receipt."

"Don't let that disturb you. Do you know your attorney's handwriting?"

"Perfectly."

"When we bring you his receipt, you will make no objection to handing the money over to us?"

"None! But my attorney will never give his receipt without the money; I know him too well."

"I will advance the sum," said Cauvignac. As he spoke he took from his wallet four thousand livres, half in louis, and the rest in half-pistoles, and arranged them in piles before the wondering eyes of the tradesman.

"Now," said he, "tell us your attorney's name."

"Master Rabodin."

"Very good; take a pen and write."

The tradesman obeyed.

"MASTER RABODIN,—I send you the four thousand livres, damages and costs due upon the judgment in favor of Master Biscarros, whom I strongly suspect of a purpose to make an improper use of it. Be kind enough to hand the bearer your receipt—"

"What next?" queried the tradesman.

"Date and sign it."

The tradesman did as he was bid.

"Now," said Cauvignac to Ferguzon, "take this letter and money, disguise yourself as a miller, and call upon the attorney."

"What shall I do there?"

"Give him the money and take his receipt."

"Is that all?"

"That's all."

"I don't understand."

"So much the better! the errand will be done all the better for that."

Ferguzon's confidence in his captain was unbounded, so he walked toward the door without another word.

"Order up some wine, and of the best," said Cauvignac; "monsieur must be thirsty."

Ferguzon bowed and went out. Within the half-hour he returned, and found Cauvignac at table with the tradesman, both doing honor to that famous Orléans wine which rejoiced the Gascon palate of Henri IV.

"Well?" said Cauvignac, inquiringly.

"Here is the receipt."

"Is that what you desire?"

And Cauvignac passed the piece of stamped paper to the tradesman.

"Precisely."

"Is the receipt in proper form?"

"It is."

"Then you have no objection to giving me your money in exchange for it?"

"None at all."

"Give it me, then."

The tradesman counted out the four thousand livres. Cauvignac placed them in his bag, where they replaced the four thousand recently taken therefrom.

"And now my release is paid for, is it?"

"Mon Dieu, yes, unless you absolutely insist upon serving."

"No, not personally; but—"

"But what? Let us hear," said Cauvignac. "I have a presentiment that we sha'n't part until we have done some more business together."

"It is very possible," said the tradesman, whose serenity was completely restored the instant the receipt was in his hands. "I have a nephew—"

"Aha!"

"A stubborn, troublesome fellow."

"Of whom you would gladly be rid?"

"No, not just that; but who would make an excellent soldier, I am sure."

"Send him to me, and I'll make a hero of him."

"You will take charge of him?"

"With pleasure."

"I have also a godson, a deserving lad, who is anxious to take orders, and for whom I am obliged to pay heavily for board."

"So that you would prefer that he should take the musket, eh? Send me the godson and the nephew; it will cost you only five hundred livres for the two."

"Five hundred livres! I don't understand."

"Why, of course, they have to pay on entering the company."

"Then why did you make me pay for the privilege of not entering it?"

"There were special reasons for that. Your nephew and your godson will pay two hundred and fifty livres each, and you will never hear of them again."

"The devil! that's an alluring prospect, do you know? They will be well cared for?"

"I give you my word that when they have once tasted service under my orders, they wouldn't change places with the Emperor of China. Ask these good fellows how I keep them. Tell him, Barrabas; tell him, Carrotel."

"In truth," said Barrabas, "we live like lords."

"And how are they clothed? Look for yourself."

Carrotel executed a pirouette in order to exhibit his resplendent costume from every point of view.

"Certainly there is nothing to be said in the matter of equipment," said the tradesman.

"So you will send me your two youths?"

"I am very anxious to do so. Do you make a long stay here?"

"No, we shall leave to-morrow morning; but we will go slowly so that they may overtake us. Give us the five hundred livres and the bargain's made."

"I have only two hundred and fifty."

"Give them the other two hundred and fifty; indeed that will furnish you with an excuse for sending them to me; if you had no pretext for sending them they might suspect something."

"But they may say that one of them alone can do the errand."

"You must tell them that the roads are not safe, and give them each twenty-five livres; that will be by way of advance on their pay."

The tradesman stared at him in wondering admiration.

"Upon my word," said he, "it takes a soldier to find a way out of every difficulty!"

Having counted out the two hundred and fifty livres to Cauvignac, he withdrew, overjoyed to have found an opportunity to be rid, for five hundred livres, of a nephew and godson who cost him more than two hundred pistoles a year.

---

V.

"Now, Master Barrabas," said Cauvignac, "have you in your valise a coat something less elegant than the one you are wearing,—one in which you might pass for an employee of the custom-house?"

"I have the tax-collector's coat, you know, that we—"

"Very good! and you have his commission, too, no doubt?"

"Lieutenant Ferguzon bade me not lose it, and I have taken great care of it."

"Lieutenant Ferguzon is the most farseeing man of my acquaintance. Array yourself as a tax-collector and take the commission with you."

Barrabas went out, and returned ten minutes later, completely transformed.

He found Cauvignac dressed wholly in black, and looking enough like a court officer to deceive anybody.

They went together to the attorney's quarters. Master Rabodin lived in a third-floor apartment, consisting of a reception-room, an office, and a closet. There were other rooms, no doubt, but as they were not open to clients we will say nothing about them.

Cauvignac passed through the reception-room, left Barrabas in the study, cast a sympathetic glance in passing at the two clerks who were pretending to write busily while playing at marelle, and entered the sanctum sanctorum.

Master Rabodin was sitting in front of a desk so laden with papers that the respectable attorney seemed to be literally buried up in writs and records and judgments. He was a tall, gaunt, sallow man, clad in a black coat which fitted as closely to his body as an eel's skin. When he heard Cauvignac's footsteps, he straightened up his long, bent backbone, and raised his head, which then appeared above the breastwork by which he was surrounded.

For an instant Cauvignac thought that he had discovered the basilisk, an animal regarded as fabulous by modern scientists, so brightly did the attorney's little eyes shine with the ominous glitter of avarice and cupidity.

"Monsieur," said Cauvignac, "I ask your pardon for calling upon you without previous appointment; but," he added with his most charming smile, "it is a privilege of my office."

"A privilege of your office!" exclaimed Master Rabodin. "What is your office, pray?"

"I am an exempt in his Majesty's service, monsieur."

"An exempt in his Majesty's service?"

"I have that honor."

"I do not understand, monsieur."

"You will understand in a moment. You know Monsieur Biscarros, do you not?"

"Certainly I know him; he is my client."

"What do you think of him?"

"What do I think of him?"

"Yes."

"Why, I think—I think—I think that he's a very worthy man."

"Well, monsieur, you are mistaken."

"What's that?—mistaken?"

"Your worthy man is a rebel."

"A rebel?"

"Yes, monsieur, a rebel, who takes advantage of the isolated situation of his inn to make it a hotbed of conspiracy."

"God bless my soul!"

"Who has bound himself to poison the king, the queen, and Monsieur de Mazarin, if they happen to put up at his inn."

"You don't mean it!"

"And whom I have arrested and taken to the prison at Libourne, on a charge of lèse-majesté."

"Monsieur, you horrify me," said Master Rabodin, falling back in his chair.

"That is not all, monsieur," continued the false exempt; "you, also, are involved in the affair."

"I, monsieur!" cried the attorney, turning from orange-yellow to apple-green; "I involved in it! how, in God's name?"

"You have in your possession a sum of money which the villain Biscarros destined for the payment of an army of rebels."

"It is true, monsieur, that I have received for him—"

"Four thousand livres! he was subjected to the torture of the brodequins, and at the eighth wedge he admitted that you had that sum."

"I have it, monsieur, but I have had it only an instant."

"So much the worse, monsieur, so much the worse!"

"Why so much the worse?"

"Because I shall be obliged to make sure of your person."

"Of my person?"

"Certainly; the complaint names you as accomplice."

The attorney turned from apple-green to bottle-green.

"Ah! if you hadn't received that sum," continued Cauvignac, "it would be a different matter; but you admit having received it, and that is against you, you see."

"Monsieur, suppose I agree to give it up; suppose I hand it to you instantly; suppose I make oath that I have no connection with this villain Biscarros?"

"You would lie under grave suspicion none the less. However, I think I may say that immediate surrender of the money—"

"Monsieur, I will give it to you this very moment!" cried Master Rabodin. "It is still there, in the bag in which it was handed to me. I have verified the amount, and that's all."

"Is it exact?"

"Count it yourself, monsieur, count it yourself."

"Nay, monsieur, by your leave, nay; for I am not empowered to touch his Majesty's money; but I have with me the tax-collector of Libourne, who was assigned to accompany me in order to take charge of the different sums which Biscarros scattered broadcast to be collected again at need."

"It is a fact that he was very urgent that I should send the four thousand livres to him the moment that I received them."

"You see! Doubtless he is already informed that Madame la Princesse has left Chantilly, and is on her way to Bordeaux, and is getting together all his resources in order to make himself prominent among her adherents."

"The wretch!"

"And you suspected nothing?"

"Nothing, monsieur, nothing."

"Had nobody warned you?"

"Nobody."

"What's that you say?" said Cauvignac, pointing to the tradesman's letter which lay open on Master Rabodin's desk, with a number of other papers. "How dare you say that when you yourself furnish me with proof to the contrary?"

"Proof?"

"Damnation! read."

Rabodin read, in a trembling voice:—

"I Master Rabodin,—I send you the four thousand livres damages and costs due upon the judgment in favor of Master Biscarros, whom I strongly suspect of a purpose to make an improper use of it.'"

"An improper use!" Cauvignac repeated. "You see that your client's unsavory reputation has reached as far as this."

"Monsieur, I am overwhelmed," said the attorney.

"I cannot conceal from you, monsieur," said Cauvignac, "that my orders are strict."

"Monsieur, I swear that I am innocent."

"Pardieu! Biscarros said the same until he was put to the question; but at the fifth wedge he changed his tone."

"I tell you, monsieur, that I am ready to hand you the money. Here it is; take it, for it burns my hands."

"Let us do things regularly," said Cauvignac. "I have already told you that it's no part of my business to handle the king's money."

He walked to the door leading to the office.

"Come in, Monsieur le Receveur," said he; "each to his own duty."

Barrabas came forward.

"Monsieur admits everything," said Cauvignac.

"What's that?—I admit everything?" cried the attorney.

"Yes, you admit that you were in correspondence with Biscarros."

"Monsieur, I have never received more than two letters from him, and I have written him only one."

"Monsieur admits that he was in possession of funds belonging to the accused."

"Here they are, monsieur. I have never received any money for him except these four thousand livres, and I am ready to hand them to you."

"Monsieur le Receveur," said Cauvignac, "as your commission authorizes you to do, take this money and give a receipt in his Majesty's name."

Barrabas handed his commission to the attorney, who pushed it away with his hand, not choosing to insult him by reading it.

"Now," said Cauvignac, while Barrabas, for fear of an error, was counting the money, "now you must come with me."

"I must go with you?"

"Certainly; didn't I tell you that you are under suspicion?"

"But, monsieur, I swear to you that his Majesty has no more faithful servitor than myself."

"It's not enough to swear to it, you must furnish proofs."

"Very well, monsieur, I will furnish proofs."

"Let's see them."

"My whole past life."

"That's not enough; we require a guaranty for the future."

"Point out to me what I can do, and I will do it."

"There is one infallible way of proving your devotion."

"What is that?"

"There is one of my friends, a captain, in Orléans at this moment, raising a company for the king."

"Well?"

"It would be well done of you to enlist in his company."

"I, monsieur!—an attorney?"

"The king is sorely in need of attorneys, monsieur, for his affairs are terribly involved."

"I would do it willingly, monsieur; but what about my office?"

"You can leave it to be run by your clerks."

"Impossible! How could they arrange to procure my signature?"

"Pardon, messieurs, if I venture to say a word," said Barrabas.

"Most assuredly!" said the attorney; "say on, monsieur, say on."

"It seems to me that if monsieur, who would make but a sorry soldier—"

"Yes, monsieur, you are right; sorry, indeed," interposed the attorney.

"If monsieur would offer your friend, or the king, in his stead—"

"What, monsieur? what can I offer the king?"

"His two clerks."

"Why, certainly!" cried the attorney; "certainly, and with great pleasure. Let your friend take them both. I give them to him; they are two delightful fellows."

"One of them seemed a mere child."

"Fifteen, monsieur; he's fifteen; and a first-class performer on the drum.—Fricotin, step this way," he shouted.

Cauvignac made a gesture with his hand, indicating that he desired Monsieur Fricotin to be left where he was.

"What of the other?" he asked.

"Eighteen, monsieur; five feet six inches tall, aspiring to become a porter at Saint-Sauveur, and, consequently, already familiar with the mode of handling a halberd.—This way, Chalumeau."

"But he squints horribly, unless I am much mistaken," said Cauvignac, making a second gesture similar to the first.

"So much the better, monsieur; so much the better! You can make him do sentry duty; and as he squints out, he can see both to right and left, while an ordinary man can only see straight ahead."

"That's an advantage, I agree; but you understand that the king is in sore straits financially; pleading with cannon-balls is much more costly than pleading with words. The king cannot burden himself with the equipment of these two youngsters; it's quite all he can do to undertake to train and pay them."

"Monsieur," said Rabodin, "if that is all that is necessary to prove my devotion to the king—why, I will make the sacrifice."

Cauvignac and Barrabas looked at each other.

"What do you think, Monsieur le Receveur?" said Cauvignac.

"I think that monsieur seems to be acting in good faith," Barrabas replied.

"And that we must be considerate with him, eh? Give monsieur a receipt for five hundred livres."

"Five hundred livres!"

"A receipt for that sum to pay for the equipment of two young soldiers, whom Master Rabodin in his zeal offers his Majesty."

"May I expect to be left at peace in consideration of this sacrifice, monsieur?"

"I think so."

"Shall I not be molested?"

"I hope not."

"And suppose that I am prosecuted, without regard to justice?"

"You are at liberty to make use of my testimony. But will your two clerks consent?"

"They will be overjoyed."

"You are sure of it?"

"Yes. But it would be best not to tell them—"

"Of the honor in store for them, eh?"

"It would be more prudent."

"What are we to do, then?"

"Oh! it's a simple matter enough. I will send them to your friend. What is his name?"

"Captain Cauvignac."

"I will send them to your friend Captain Cauvignac, upon some pretext or other; it had better be somewhere outside of Orléans, to avoid a possible scandal."

"Yes, and so that the Orléanais may not be seized with the desire to scourge you with rods, as Camillus did the schoolmaster in ancient times."

"I will send them to him, then, outside the city."

"On the high-road from Orléans to Tours, for example."

"At the first public-house."

"Yes; they will find Captain Cauvignac at table. He will offer them a glass of wine and they will accept. He will propose the king's health, which they will drink with enthusiasm, and there they are soldiers! Now you may call them."

The attorney called the young men. Fricotin was a little fellow, hardly four feet tall, thick-set, quick and active; Chalumeau was a great booby of five feet six, thin as an asparagus-stalk, and red as a carrot.

"Messieurs," said Cauvignac, "Master Rabodin here proposes to show his confidence in you by sending you upon an errand of importance. To-morrow morning you will go to the first inn outside the city on the Tours road, to fetch a package of papers relating to the suit of Captain Cauvignac against Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld. Master Rabodin will give you twenty-five livres each for the service."

Fricotin, who was a credulous youth, leaped three feet into the air. But Chalumeau, who was by nature suspicious, looked at Cauvignac and the attorney at the same moment, with an expression of doubt which made him squint three times as badly as usual.

"Stay, stay!" exclaimed Master Rabodin; "one moment. I didn't agree to pay the fifty livres."

"Which sum," continued the false exempt, "Master Rabodin will recoup in his fees in the suit between Captain Cauvignac and Monsieur le Duc de La Rochefoucauld."

Master Rabodin hung his head; he was fairly caught. He must go through the door that was pointed out to him, or else through the door of a prison.

"Very good," said he. "I consent; but I hope you will give me a receipt for all this."

"Look at this," said Barrabas, "and see if I haven't anticipated your desire;" and he handed him a paper on which these words were written:—

"Received from Master Rabodin, his Majesty's faithful subject,
the sum of five hundred livres, as a voluntary offering, to
assist him in his war against the princes."

"If you insist," said Barrabas, "I will put the two clerks in the receipt."

"No, no," said the attorney, hastily; "it's quite right as it is."

"By the way," said Cauvignac, "tell Fricotin to bring his drum, and Chalumeau his halberd; it will be so much less to buy."

"But on what pretext shall I tell them to do that?"

"Pardieu! as a means of amusing themselves on the road."

With that the pretended exempt and pretended collector took their departure, leaving Master Rabodin bewildered at the thought of the danger he had escaped, and only too happy to have come so well out of it.

---

VI.

The next morning everything passed off as Cauvignac had planned. The nephew and godson were the first to arrive, both mounted on the same horse; then came Fricotin and Chalumeau, one with his drum, the other with his halberd. There was some little opposition to be overcome when it was explained to them that they had the honor of being enrolled in the service of the princes; but all opposition vanished before the threats of Cauvignac, the promises of Ferguzon, and the logic of Barrabas.

The horse of the nephew and godson was assigned to the duty of carrying the baggage, and as Cauvignac's commission authorized him to raise a company of infantry, the two raw recruits could say nothing.

They set out at once. Cauvignac's march resembled a triumph. The ingenious freebooter had found a way to bring into the war the most persistent advocates of peace. Some he induced to embrace the cause of the king, others the cause of the princes. Some believed they were enlisting in the service of the Parliament, others in that of the King of England, who was talking of a descent upon Scotland to attempt the conquest of his dominions. There was naturally, at first, some little lack of uniformity in the colors, some discord in the sentiments of the troops, whom Lieutenant Ferguzon, despite his persuasive powers, found it difficult to reduce to the level of passive obedience. However, by resorting constantly to secrecy and mystery, which were necessary, so Cauvignac said, to the success of the operation, they were induced to go forward, soldiers and officers alike, without knowing where they were going, or what they were to do.

Four days after leaving Chantilly Cauvignac had collected twenty-five men; a very pretty little nucleus of an army. Many rivers which make a great noise when they flow into the sea, have a less imposing origin.

Cauvignac was in search of a convenient centre of operations. He reached a little village between Châtellerault and Poitiers, which seemed to suit his purposes. It was the village of Jaulnay. Cauvignac recognized it as the place where he had delivered an order to Canolles on a certain evening, and he established his headquarters there at the inn, where he remembered that he had supped very comfortably on the evening in question. As to that, he had no choice, for, as we have said before, it was the only inn in the place.

Thus established, on the principal highway from Paris to Bordeaux, Cauvignac had behind him the troops of Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, who was besieging Saumur, and before him those of the king, who were concentrated in Guyenne. Holding out a hand to either, and abstaining from hoisting any colors whatsoever until the proper time, he set about collecting a hundred men, with whom at his back he might make the most of his opportunities. Recruiting went merrily forward, and in a very short time his task was well-nigh half done.

One day, having passed the whole morning in hunting men, he was standing, as usual, on the watch, at the door of the inn, talking with his lieutenant and sub-lieutenant, when he spied a young lady on horseback at the end of the village street, followed by a squire, also on horseback, and two mules laden with trunks.

The ease with which the fair Amazon handled her steed, and the stiff, haughty bearing of the squire, awakened a slumbering memory in Cauvignac's mind. He laid his hand upon Ferguzon's arm,—his lieutenant was indisposed that day, and his manner was somewhat dejected,—and said, pointing to the traveller:—

"There's the fiftieth soldier of the Cauvignac regiment, or I'm damned!"

"Who? that young lady?"

"Precisely."

"Nonsense! we already have a nephew who was to be an advocate, a godson who was to be a priest, two attorney's clerks, two druggists, a doctor, three bakers, two country bumpkins; that's enough of that kind of soldiers, God knows! without adding a woman to them; for some day or other we shall have to fight."

"Very true; but our cash only amounts to twenty-five thousand livres" (it appears that the cash as well as the troop had taken pattern by the snowball), "and if we could reach a good round figure, thirty thousand livres, say, it seems to me that it wouldn't be a bad scheme."

"Ah! if you look at it from that point of view, I am with you, and haven't a word to say."

"Hush! you will see."

Cauvignac approached the young woman, who, having drawn rein in front of one of the windows of the inn, was questioning the hostess, who assured her that she could be accommodated with a room.

"Your servant, young gentleman," he said, with a cunning expression, putting his hand to his hat in a free and easy way.

"Young gentleman, did you say?" said the lady, with a smile.

"Yes, viscount."

The lady blushed.

"I am at a loss to know what you mean, monsieur," she said.

"Oh! yes, you do, and the half-inch of blush on your cheeks proves it."

"You certainly are mistaken, monsieur."

"Nay, nay! on the contrary, I am perfectly sure of what I say."

"A truce to your jesting, monsieur."

"I am not jesting, monsieur, and if you wish for proofs, you shall have them. I had the honor to meet you, it will soon be three weeks ago, dressed according to your sex, on the banks of the Dordogne, on which occasion you were attended by your faithful squire, Monsieur Pompée. Is Monsieur Pompée still in your service?—Why, yes, there he is now, dear Monsieur Pompée! Will you tell me that I don't know him either?"

The squire and the young woman looked at each other in speechless amazement.

"Oh! yes, that astonishes you, my gallant viscount," Cauvignac continued; "but dare to say that it was not you whom I met on the road to Saint-Martin de Cubzac, a fourth of a league from the hostelry of Master Biscarros."

"I do not deny the meeting, monsieur."

"What did I say?"

"But that was the time when I was disguised."

"Nay, nay, you are disguised now. I quite understand that, as the description of the Vicomte de Cambes has been given out all through Guyenne, you deemed it more prudent, in order to avoid suspicion, to adopt, for the moment, this costume, which, to do you justice, my fair sir, is extremely becoming to you."

"Monsieur," said the viscountess, with an anxiety which she tried in vain to conceal, "except that your conversation contains a word or two of sense now and then, I should think you mad."

"I will not pay you the same compliment, for it seems to me a most judicious thing to disguise one's self when one is conspiring."

The young woman gazed at Cauvignac with increasing uneasiness.

"Indeed, monsieur," she said, "it seems to me that I have seen you somewhere; but I cannot remember where."

"The first time, as I have told you, was on the banks of the Dordogne."

"And the second?"

"The second was at Chantilly."

"On the day of the hunt?"

"Even so."

"In that case, monsieur, I have nothing to fear, for you are one of us."

"Why so?"

"Because you were at Chantilly."

"Permit me to observe that that is no reason."

"It seems to me to be."

"There were too many there to be sure that they were all friends."

"Beware, monsieur, or you will force me to form a strange opinion of you."

"Oh! form whatever opinion you choose; I am not sensitive."

"But, when all is said, what do you desire?"

"To do the honors of the inn, if you have no objection."

"I am deeply grateful to you, monsieur, but I do not require your services. I am expecting a friend."

"Very good; dismount, and while you are waiting, we will talk."

"What am I to do, madame?" interposed Pompée.

"Dismount, engage a room, and order supper," said Cauvignac.

"Monsieur," rejoined the viscountess, "if I mistake not, it is for me to give orders to my servant."

"That depends upon circumstances, viscount. I command at Jaulnay, and have fifty men at my beck and call. Pompée; do as I bid you."

Pompée lowered his crest and entered the inn.

"Do you presume to arrest me, monsieur?" demanded the young woman.

"Perhaps."

"What do you mean by perhaps?"

"It will depend upon the conversation we are about to have. Pray take the trouble to dismount, viscount; so! that's right. Now accept my arm; the inn people will take your horse to the stable."

"I obey, monsieur; for, as you say, you are the stronger. I have no means of resisting, but I tell you now that the person I am expecting will soon be here, and that he is an officer of the king."

"Very well, viscount; you will do me the honor to present me to him, and I shall be charmed to make his acquaintance."

The viscountess realized that resistance was useless at present, and she led the way into the inn, making a sign to her strange interlocutor that he was at liberty to follow her if he chose.

Cauvignac escorted her to the door of the room bespoken by Pompée, and was about to follow her in, when Ferguzon ran quickly up the stairs and whispered to him:—

"Captain, a carriage with three horses, a young man, masked, inside, and two servants at the doors."

"Good!" said Cauvignac; "it is probably the gentleman expected."

"Ah! do we expect a gentleman?"

"Yes, and I will go down to meet him. Do you remain in this corridor; don't lose sight of the door; let everybody in, but see that nobody goes out."

"Very well, captain."

A travelling-carriage had stopped at the door of the inn, escorted by four men of Cauvignac's company, who joined it a quarter of a league outside the town, and had not since parted company with it.

A young gentleman, dressed in blue velvet, and wrapped in a great furred cloak, was lying rather than sitting inside the carriage. From the time that the four men surrounded his vehicle he had plied them with questions; but, finding that he could obtain no answer, despite his persistence, he seemed to have resigned himself to wait, and simply raised his head from time to time to see if somebody had not come up from whom he could demand an explanation of the strange conduct of these people in his regard.

It was impossible, however, to make a just estimate of the impression produced upon the young traveller by this episode, as one of the black satin masks, called loups, which were very much in vogue at that time, hid half of his face. Those portions which could be seen, however,—that is to say, the upper part of his forehead, and his mouth and chin,—denoted youth, beauty, and intelligence. His teeth were small and white, and a pair of bright eyes shone through the holes in the mask.

Two tall footmen, pale and trembling, although each held a blunderbuss across his knee, sat as if glued to their saddles at either door of the carriage. The whole scene would have made an excellent picture of brigands stopping travellers on the highway, except for the bright daylight, the inn, the smiling features of Cauvignac, and the imperturbability of the pretended thieves.

At sight of Cauvignac, who, as we have said, when notified by Ferguzon, made his appearance at the door, the young man uttered a little shriek of surprise, and hastily put his hand to his face, as if to make sure that his mask was in place; finding that it was, he recovered his tranquillity.

Swift as the movement was, it did not escape Cauvignac. He gazed at the traveller with the eye of a man skilful in tracing resemblances even upon the most disguised features, and the next moment started, in spite of himself, apparently as much surprised as the young gentleman in blue. He recovered himself, however, and said, removing his hat with a grace that was peculiar to him:—

"Welcome, fair lady."

The traveller's eyes shone with surprise through the holes in his mask.

"Where are you going in this guise, pray?" continued Cauvignac.

"Where am I going?" replied the traveller, taking no notice of Cauvignac's salutation,—"where am I going? You ought to know better than I, as it seems that I am not at liberty to continue my journey. I am going where you take me."

"Permit me to remark," continued Cauvignac, with a greater show of politeness than ever, "that that does not answer my question, fair lady! Your arrest is only momentary. When we have talked together a few moments upon certain matters in which we are mutually interested, with our hearts and our faces laid bare, you may resume your journey unmolested."

"Pardon me," rejoined the traveller, "but before going any farther, let us rectify an error. You pretend to take me for a woman, although you can see from my dress that I am a man."

"You know the Latin proverb: Ne nimium crede colori,—the wise man doesn't judge by appearances. Now I make some pretensions to wisdom, and the consequence is that, under this deceitful costume, I have recognized—"

"What?" demanded the traveller, impatiently.

"Why, I have already told you,—a woman!"

"Well, if I am a woman, why do you stop me?"

"Peste! Because, in times like these, women are more dangerous than men; indeed, the war in which we are engaged might, properly speaking, be called the war of women. The queen and Madame de Condé are the two belligerent powers. They have taken for lieutenant-generals Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, Madame de Longueville—and yourself. Mademoiselle de Chevreuse is Monsieur le Coadjuteur's general, Madame de Montbazon is Monsieur de Beaufort's, Madame de Longueville Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld's, and you—you have every appearance of being Monsieur le Duc d'Épernon's."

"You are mad, monsieur," said the young traveller, shrugging his shoulders.

"I should not be inclined to believe you, fair lady, were it not for the fact that a handsome youth paid me the same compliment a moment since."

"Perhaps he was a woman whom you persisted in calling a man."

"Even so. I recognized my fine gentleman from having seen him on a certain evening early in May, prowling around Master Biscarros' inn, and I was not to be taken in by his petticoats and his wigs and his little soft voice, any more than I am taken in by your gray felt, and your fancy boots; and I said to him: 'My young friend, take what name you choose, wear what costume you choose, assume what voice you choose, you will be the Vicomte de Cambes none the less. '"

"The Vicomte de Cambes!" cried the traveller.

"Ah! the name seems to make an impression upon you. Do you happen to know him?"

"A very young man, almost a child?"

"Seventeen or eighteen years old, at most."

"Very fair?"

"Very fair."

"Large blue eyes?"

"Very large, very blue."

"Is he here?"

"He is here."

"And you say that he is—"

"Disguised as a woman, the rascal,—as you are as a man, slyboots."

"Why is he here, pray?" cried the young man, vehemently, and with evident distress, which increased perceptibly as Cauvignac assumed a more serious tone, and became more sparing of his words.

"Why," he replied, enunciating every syllable with great distinctness, "he claims to have an appointment with one of his friends."

"One of his friends?"

"Yes."

"A gentleman?"

"Probably."

"A baron?"

"Perhaps."

"And his name is—"

Cauvignac's brow contracted beneath a weighty thought which then first presented itself to his mind, and caused a perceptible commotion in his brain.

"Oho!" he muttered, "that would be a pretty kettle offish."

"And his name?" the traveller repeated.

"Wait a moment," said Cauvignac; "wait a moment—his name ends in olles."

"Monsieur de Canolles!" cried the traveller, whose lips became deathly pale, making a ghastly contrast with the black silk mask.

"That's the name! Monsieur de Canolles," said Cauvignac, following, upon the visible portions of the young man's face and in the convulsive movement of his whole body, the revolution which was taking place in his mind. "Do you know Monsieur de Canolles, too? In God's name, do you know everybody?"

"A truce to jesting," faltered the young man, who was trembling all over, and seemed on the point of fainting.

"Where is this lady?"

"In that room yonder; look, the third window from this,—where the yellow curtains are."

"I want to see her!" cried the traveller.

"Oho! have I made a mistake, and can it be that you are this Monsieur de Canolles whom she expects? Or, rather, isn't this Monsieur de Canolles, this gallant cavalier just trotting up, followed by a lackey who looks to me like a consummate idiot?"

The young traveller jumped forward so precipitately to look through the glass in the front of the carriage that he broke it with his head.

"'T is he! 'tis he!" he cried, utterly regardless of the fact that the blood was flowing from a slight wound. "Oh! the villain! he is here to meet her; I am undone!"

"Ah! didn't I say that you were a woman?"

"They meet here by appointment," the young man continued, wringing his hands. "Oh! I will have my revenge!"

Cauvignac would have indulged in some further pleasantry; but the young man made an imperious gesture with one hand, while with the other he tore off his mask, and the pale, threatening face of Nanon was revealed to Cauvignac's impassive gaze.

---

VII.

"Good-day to you, little sister," said Cauvignac, offering the young woman his hand with imperturbable phlegm.

"Good-day! So you recognized me, did you?"

"The instant I laid my eyes on you. It wasn't enough to hide your face; you should have covered up that charming dimple, and your pearly teeth. When you wish to disguise yourself, coquette, cover your whole face! but you were not careful—et fugit ad salices—"

"Enough!" said Nanon, imperiously; "let us talk seriously."

"I ask nothing better; only by talking seriously can business be properly transacted."

"You say that the Vicomtesse de Cambes is here?"

"In person."

"And that Monsieur de Canolles is entering the inn at this moment?"

"Not yet; he dismounts and throws his rein to his servant. Ah! he has been seen yonder also. See, the window with the yellow curtains opens, and the viscountess puts out her head. Ah! she gives a little shriek of delight. Monsieur de Canolles darts into the house; get out of sight, little sister, or all will be lost."

Nanon threw herself back, convulsively pressing Cauvignac's hand, as he gazed at her with an air of paternal compassion.

"And I was going to Paris to join him!" cried Nanon. "I risked everything for the sake of seeing him again!"

"Ah! such a sacrifice, little sister, and for an ingrate, into the bargain! Upon my word, you might bestow your favors to better purpose."

"What will they say to each other, now they are together? What will they do?"

'Faith, dear Nanon, you embarrass me sorely by putting such a question to me; they will—pardieu! they will love each other dearly, I suppose."

"Oh! that shall not be!" cried Nanon, frantically gnawing at her nails, which shone like polished ivory.

"On the contrary, I fancy that it will be," rejoined Cauvignac. "Ferguzon has orders to let no one come out, but not to keep anybody out. At this moment, in all probability, the viscountess and Baron de Canolles are exchanging all sorts of endearing terms, each more charming than the last. Peste! dear Nanon, you are too late."

"Do you think so?" retorted the young woman with an indefinable expression of irony and malignant cunning; "do you think so? Very good; just come in and sit beside me, you wretched diplomatist."

Cauvignac obeyed.

"Bertrand," said Nanon to one of her retainers, "tell the coachman to turn quietly about, and draw up under the clump of trees we left at the right as we entered the village.—Won't that be a safe place to talk?" she asked Cauvignac.

"There could be no better. But permit me to take a few precautions on my own account."

"Go on."

Cauvignac made signs to four of his men, who were strutting about the inn, buzzing and puffing like hornets in the sun, to follow him.

"You do well to take those men," said Nanon, "and if you follow my advice you will take six rather than four; there may be work cut out for them."

"Good!" said Cauvignac; "work of that kind is what I want."

"Then you will be content," said Nanon.

The coachman turned the carriage, and drove away, with Nanon, red with the flame of her thoughts, and Cauvignac, apparently calm and cold, but ready, nevertheless, to lend an attentive ear to his sister's suggestions.

Meanwhile, Canolles, attracted by the joyous cry uttered by Madame de Cambes when she caught sight of him, had darted into the inn, and to the viscountess's room, without noticing Ferguzon, whom he passed in the corridor, but who made no objection to his entering, as he had received no instructions concerning him.

"Ah! monsieur," cried Madame de Cambes, "come in quickly; I have been so impatient for you to come!"

"Those words would make me the happiest man in the world, madame, if your pallor and your evident distress did not tell me as plainly as words could do that you were not expecting me for myself alone."

"Yes, monsieur, you are right," said Claire with her charming smile, "and I desire to lay myself under still greater obligation to you."

"How so?"

"By begging you to save me from some peril, I know not what, which threatens me."

"Peril?"

"Yes. Wait."

She went to the door, and threw the bolt.

"I have been recognized," she said, returning to Canolles.

"By whom?"

"By a man whose name I do not know, but whose face and voice are familiar to me. It seems as if I heard his voice the evening that you, in this very room, received the order to repair at once to Mantes. It seems also as if I had seen his face at the hunting party at Chantilly, the day that I took Madame de Condé's place."

"Whom do you take the man to be?"

"An agent of Monsieur le Duc d'Épernon, and therefore an enemy."

"The devil!" exclaimed Canolles. "You say that he recognized you?"

"Yes; he called me by name, although he insisted that I was a man. There are officers of the king's party all over the country hereabout; I am known to belong to the party of the princes, and it may be that they proposed to make trouble for me. But you are here, and I no longer have any fear. You are an officer yourself, and belong to the same party that they do, so you will be my safeguard."

"Alas!" said Canolles, "I greatly fear that I can offer you no other defence or protection than that of my sword."

"How is that?"

"Because from this moment I cease to belong to the king's party."

"Do you mean what you say?" cried Claire, delighted beyond measure.

"I promised myself that I would forward my resignation from the place where I next met you. I have met you, and my resignation will be forwarded from Jaulnay."

"Oh! free! free! you are free! you can embrace the cause of justice and loyalty; you can join the party of the princes, that is to say, of all the nobility. Oh! I knew that you were too noble-hearted not to come to it at last."

Canolles kissed with transport the hand Claire offered him.

"How did it come about?" she continued. "Tell me every detail."

"Oh! it's not a long story. I wrote Monsieur de Mazarin to inform him of what had taken place. When I arrived at Mantes, I was ordered to wait upon him; he called me a poor fool, I called him a poor fool; he laughed, I lost my temper; he raised his voice, I bade him go to the devil. I returned to my hôtel; I was waiting until he thought fit to consign me to the Bastille; he was waiting until prudence should bid me begone from Mantes. After twenty-four hours prudence bade me take that course. And even that I owe to you, for I thought of what you promised me, and that you might be waiting for me. So it was that I threw away all responsibility, all thought of party, and with my hands free, and almost without preference, I remembered one thing only, that I loved you, madame, and that at last I might tell you so, aloud and boldly."

"So you have thrown away your rank for me, you are disgraced, ruined, all for my sake! Dear Monsieur de Canolles, how can I ever pay my debt? How can I prove my gratitude to you?"

With a smile and a tear which gave him back a hundred times more than he had lost, Madame de Cambes brought Canolles to her feet.

"Ah! madame," said he, "from this moment I am rich and happy; for I am to be always with you, I am never to leave you more, I shall be happy in the privilege of seeing you, and rich in your love."

"There is no further obstacle, then?"

"No."

"You belong to me absolutely, and, while keeping your heart, I may offer your arm to Madame la Princesse?"

"You may."

"You have sent your resignation, do you say?"

"Not yet; I wished to see you first; but, as I told you, now that I have seen you again, I propose to write it here, instantly. I preferred to wait until I could do it in obedience to your orders."

"Write, then, before anything else! If you do not write, you will be looked upon as a turncoat; indeed, you must wait, before taking any decisive step, until your resignation is accepted."

"Dear little diplomatist, have no fear that they will not accept it, and very gladly. My bungling at Chantilly will spare them any great regret. Did they not tell me," laughed Canolles, "that I was a poor fool?"

"Yes; but we will make up to you for any opinion they may entertain, never fear. Your affair at Chantilly will be more thoroughly appreciated at Bordeaux than at Paris, I assure you. But write, baron, write, so that we may leave this place! for I confess that I am not at ease by any means in this inn."

"Are you speaking of the past; is it the memory of another time that terrifies you so?" said Canolles, gazing fondly about the room.

"No. I am speaking of the present, and you do not enter into my fears to-day."

"Whom do you fear, pray? What have you to fear?"

"Mon Dieu! who knows?"

At that moment, as if to justify the viscountess's apprehension, three blows were struck upon the door with appalling solemnity.

Claire and Canolles ceased their conversation and exchanged an anxious, questioning glance.

"In the king's name!" said a voice outside. "Open!"

The next moment the fragile door was shattered. Canolles attempted to seize his sword, but a man had already stepped between his sword and him.

"What does this mean?" he demanded.

"You are Monsieur le Baron de Canolles, are you not?"

"I am."

"Captain in the Navailles regiment?"

"Yes."

"Sent upon a confidential mission by the Duc d'Épernon?"

Canolles nodded his head.

"In that case, in the names of the king, and her Majesty the Queen Regent, I arrest you."

"Your warrant?"

"Here it is."

"But, monsieur," said Canolles, handing back the paper after he had glanced over it rapidly, "it seems to me that I know you."

"Know me! Parbleu! Wasn't it in the same village where I arrest you to-day, that I brought you an order from Monsieur le Duc d'Épernon to betake yourself to the court? Your fortune was in that commission, my young gentleman. You have missed it; so much the worse for you!"

Claire turned pale, and fell weeping upon a chair; she had recognized the impertinent questioner.

"Monsieur de Mazarin is taking his revenge," muttered Canolles.

"Come, monsieur, we must be off," said Cauvignac.

Claire did not stir. Canolles, undecided as to the course he should pursue, seemed near going mad. The catastrophe was so overpowering and unexpected that he bent beneath its weight; he bowed his head and resigned himself.

Moreover, at that period the words "In the king's name!" had not lost their magic effect, and no one dared resist them.

"Where are you taking me, monsieur?" he said.

"Are you forbidden to afford me the poor consolation of knowing where I am going?"

"No, monsieur, I will tell you. We are to escort you to Île-Saint Georges."

"Adieu, madame," said Canolles, bowing respectfully to Madame de Cambes; "adieu!"

"Well, well," said Cauvignac to himself, "things aren't so far advanced as I thought. I will tell Nanon; it will please her immensely."

"Four men to escort the captain!" he cried, stepping to the door. "Forward, four men!"

"And where am I to be taken?" cried Madame de Cambes, holding out her arms toward the prisoner. "If the baron is guilty, I am still more guilty than he."

"You, madame," replied Cauvignac, "are free, and may go where you choose." And he left the room with the baron.

Madame de Cambes rose, with a gleam of hope, and prepared to leave the inn at once, before contrary orders should be issued.

"Free!" said she. "In that case I can watch over him; I will go at once."

Darting to the window, she was in time to see Canolles in the midst of his escort, and to exchange a farewell wave of the hand with him. Then she called Pompée, who, hoping for a halt of two or three days, had established himself in the best room he could find, and bade him make ready for immediate departure.

---

VIII.

It was an even more melancholy journey for Canolles than he had anticipated. The most carefully guarded prisoner has a false feeling of freedom in the saddle, but the saddle was soon succeeded by a carriage, a leathern affair, the shape of which and its capacity for jolting are still retained in Touraine. Furthermore, Canolles' knees were interlocked with those of a man with the beak of an eagle, whose hand rested lovingly on the butt of a pistol. Sometimes, at night, for he slept during the day, he hoped to be able to elude the vigilance of this new Argus; but beside the eagle's beak were two great owl's-eyes, round, flaming, and most excellently adapted for nocturnal observations, so that, turn which way he would, Canolles would always see those two round eyes gleaming in that direction.

While he slept, one of the two eyes also slept, but only one. Nature had endowed this man with the faculty of sleeping with one eye open.

Two days and two nights Canolles passed in gloomy reflections; for the fortress of Île Saint-Georges—an inoffensive fortress enough, by the way—assumed terrifying proportions in the prisoner's eyes, as fear and remorse sank more deeply into his heart.

Remorse, because he realized that his mission to Madame la Princesse was a confidential mission, which he had made the most of to further his own interests, and that he had committed a terrible indiscretion on that occasion. At Chantilly, Madame de Condé was simply a fugitive. At Bordeaux, Madame de Condé was a rebel princess. Fear, because he knew by tradition the appalling vengeance of which Anne of Austria, in her wrath, was capable.

There was another source of perhaps even keener remorse than that we have mentioned. There was, somewhere in the world, a young woman, a beautiful, clever young woman, who had used her great influence solely to put him forward; a woman who, through her love for him, had again and again imperilled her position, her future, her fortune; and that woman, not only the most charming of mistresses, but the most devoted of friends, he had brutally abandoned, without excuse, at a time when her thoughts were busy with him, and instead of revenging herself upon him she had persistently bestowed additional tokens of her favor upon him; and her voice, instead of sounding reproachfully in his ears, had never lost the caressing sweetness of an almost regal favor. It is true that that favor had come to him at an inauspicious moment, at a moment when Canolles would certainly have preferred disgrace; but was that Nanon's fault? Nanon had looked upon that mission to his Majesty as a method of augmenting the fortune and worldly position of the man with whom her mind was constantly filled.

All those who have loved two women at once,—and I ask pardon of my lady-readers, but this phenomenon, which they find it so hard to understand, because they never have but one love, is very common among us men,—all those who have loved two women at once, I say, will understand that as Canolles reflected more and more deeply, Nanon recovered more and more of the influence over his mind which he thought she had lost forever. The harsh asperities of character which wound one in the constant contact of daily intercourse, and cause momentary irritation, are forgotten in absence; while, on the other hand, certain sweeter memories resume their former intensity with solitude. Fair and lost to him, kind and ill-treated,—in such guise did Nanon now appear to Canolles.

The fact was that Canolles searched his own heart ingenuously, and not with the bad grace of those accused persons who are forced to a general confession. What had Nanon done to him that he should abandon her? What had Madame de Cambes done that he should follow her? What was there so fascinating and lovable in the little cavalier of the Golden Calf? Was Madame de Cambes so vastly superior to Nanon? Are golden locks so much to be preferred to black that one should be a perjured ingrate to his mistress, and a traitor to his king, all for the sake of exchanging black locks for golden? And yet, oh, pitiable human nature! Canolles brought all these eminently sensible arguments to bear upon himself, but Canolles was not convinced. The heart is full of such mysteries, which bring happiness to lovers and despair to philosophers. All this did not prevent Canolles from hating himself, and berating his own folly soundly.

"I am going to be punished," he said, thinking that the punishment effaces the crime; "I am going to be punished, and so much the better. I suppose I shall have to do with some very rough-spoken, very insolent, very brutal captain, who will read to me, from the supreme height of his dignity as jailer-in-chief, an order from Monsieur de Mazarin, who will point out a dungeon for me, and will send me to forgather with the rats and toads fifteen feet underground, while I might have lived in the light, and flourished in the sun's rays, in the arms of a woman who loved me, whom I loved, and whom it may be that I still love. Cursed little viscount! why need you have served as envelope to such a fascinating viscountess? But is there anywhere in all the world a viscountess who is worth what this particular one is likely to cost me? For it's not simply the governor, and the dungeon fifteen feet under ground; if they think me a traitor, they won't leave matters half-investigated; they will pick a quarrel with me about that Chantilly affair, which I could not pay too heavy a penalty for, if it had been more fruitful of results for me; but it has brought me in just three kisses upon her hand. Triple idiot, when I had the power, not to use it! Poor fool! as Monsieur de Mazarin says,—to be a traitor, and not collect the pay for his treason! Who will pay me now?"

Canolles shrugged his shoulders contemptuously in reply to this mental question.

The man with the round eyes, clear-sighted as he was, could not understand this pantomime, and gazed at him in amazement.

"If they question me," Canolles continued, "I'll not answer; for what answer can I make? That I was not fond of Monsieur de Mazarin? In that case I was under no obligation to enter his service. That I did love Madame de Cambes? A fine reason that to give a queen and a first minister! So I won't reply at all. But these judges are very sensitive fellows; when they ask questions they like to be answered. There are brutal wedges in these provincial jails; they'll shatter my slender knees, of which I was so proud, and send me back to my rats and my toads a perfect wreck. I shall be bandy-legged all my life, like Monsieur le Prince de Conti, and that would make me extremely ugly, even supposing that his Majesty would cover me with his wing, which he will take good care not to do."

Besides the governor and the rats and toads and wedges, there were certain scaffolds whereon rebels were beheaded, certain gallows whereon traitors were hanged, and certain drill grounds where deserters were shot. But all this was of small consequence to a well-favored youth like Canolles, in comparison with bandy legs.

He resolved, therefore, to keep his mind clear and to question his companion upon the subject.

The round eyes, the eagle's beak, and the frowning expression of that personage gave him but slight encouragement to accost him. However, no matter how stolid a man's face may be, it must soften a little at times, and Canolles took advantage of an instant when a grimace resembling a smile passed across the features of the subaltern who watched him so sharply.

"Monsieur!" said he.

"Monsieur?" was the reply.

"Excuse me if I take you away from your reflections."

"Make no excuses, monsieur, for I never reflect."

"The devil! you are surely endowed with a fortunate mental organization, monsieur."

"And therefore I never complain."

"Ah, well, you're not like me in that; for I am very much inclined to complain."

"Of what, monsieur?"

"Because I was arrested just when I was least expecting it, to be taken I don't know where."

"Oh! yes, monsieur, you do know, for you were told."

"So I was. We are going to Île Saint-Georges, aren't we?"

"Precisely."

"Do you think I shall remain there long?"

"I have no idea, monsieur; but from the way in which you were recommended, I think it's likely."

"Oho! Is it a very forbidding place, this Île Saint-Georges?"

"Don't you know the fortress?"

"On the inside, no; I have never been inside."

"It's not very attractive, monsieur; and, aside from the governor's apartments, which have been newly furnished and are very pleasant, as I am informed, it's rather a gloomy abode."

"Very good. Do you suppose they will question me?"

"It's the custom."

"And suppose I don't answer?"

"Suppose you don't answer?"

"Yes."

"The devil! in that case there's the torture, you know."

"Ordinary?"

"Ordinary or extraordinary, according to the charge. What is the charge against you, monsieur?"

"Why," said Canolles, "I am much afraid that I am accused of offences against the State."

"Oho! in that case you will enjoy the extraordinary torture. Ten pots—"

"What's that? ten pots?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you will have the ten pots of water poured down your throat."

"So the torture by water is in vogue at Île Saint-Georges, is it?"

"Dame! monsieur, you understand that on the Garonne—"

"To be sure, where the water is right at hand. How many pailfuls in the ten pots?"

"Three to three and a half."

"I shall swell up in that case."

"A little. But if you take the precaution to arrange matters with the jailer—"

"What then?"

"You will have an easy time of it."

"In what does the service that the jailer has it in his power to render me consist, I beg to know?"

"He can give you oil to drink."

"Is oil a specific?"

"Of sovereign efficacy."

"Do you think so?"

"I speak from experience. I have drunk (bu)—"

"You have drunk?"

"Pardon me; I meant to say, I have seen (vu). The habit of talking with Gascons makes me pronounce v like b sometimes, and vice versa."

"You were saying," said Canolles, unable to repress a smile, notwithstanding the gravity of the conversation,—"you were saying that you had seen—?"

"Yes, monsieur, I have seen a man drink the ten pots of water with great facility, thanks to the oil which he had taken to put the canals in proper condition. To be sure, he swelled up, as they all do; but with a good fire they disinflated him without much damage. That is the essential thing in the second part of the operation. Be sure and remember these words: to heat without burning."

"I understand," said Canolles. "Mayhap monsieur was the executioner?"

"No, monsieur," replied his interlocutor, with courtesy seasoned with modesty.

"His assistant, perhaps?"

"No, monsieur; an onlooker, simply."

"Ah! and monsieur's name is—?"

"Barrabas."

"A fine name, an old name, too; made famous in the Scriptures."

"In the Passion, monsieur."

"That's what I meant; but from habit I used the other expression."

"Monsieur prefers to say 'the Scriptures.' Is monsieur a Huguenot?"

"Yes, but a very ignorant Huguenot. Would you believe that I know hardly three thousand verses of the Psalms?"

"Indeed, it is very little."

"I succeeded better in remembering the music. There has been much hanging and burning in my family."

"I hope that no such fate is in store for monsieur."

"No, there is a much more tolerant spirit to-day; they will submerge me probably, nothing more."

Barrabas began to laugh.

Canolles' heart leaped for joy; he had won over his keeper. If this jailer ad interim should become his permanent jailer, he stood a fair chance to obtain the oil; he determined, therefore, to take up the conversation where he had left it.

"Monsieur Barrabas," said he, "are we destined to be soon separated, or shall you do me the honor to continue to bear me company?"

"Monsieur, when we arrive at Île Saint-Georges, I shall be obliged, I deeply regret to say, to leave you; I must return to our company."

"Indeed; do you belong to a company of archers?"

"No, monsieur, to a company of soldiers."

"Levied by the minister?"

"No, monsieur, by Captain Cauvignac, the same man who had the honor of arresting you."

"Are you in the king's service?"

"I think so, monsieur."

"What the devil do you mean by that? Are you not sure?"

"One is sure of nothing in this world."

"Well, if you are in doubt there is one thing that you should do, in order to set your doubts at rest."

"What is that?"

"Let me go."

"Impossible, monsieur."

"But I will pay you handsomely for your kindness."

"With what?"

"Pardieu! with money,"

"Monsieur has none."

"I have no money?"

"No."

Canolles hastily felt in his pockets.

"Upon my word, my purse has disappeared," he said. "Who has taken my purse?"

"I, monsieur," replied Barrabas with a low bow.

"Why did you do it?"

"So that monsieur could not corrupt me."

Canolles stared at the honest keeper in open-mouthed admiration, and as the argument seemed to admit of no reply, he made none.

The result was that the travellers relapsed into silence, and the journey, as it drew near its close, resumed the depressing characteristics which marked its beginning.

---

IX.

Day was breaking when the clumsy vehicle reached the village nearest to its island destination. Canolles, feeling that it had ceased to move, passed his head through the little loophole intended to furnish air to those who were free, and conveniently arranged to shut it off from prisoners.

A pretty little village, consisting of some hundred houses grouped about a church on a hillside, and overlooked by a château, was sharply outlined in the clear morning air, gilded by the first rays of the sun, which put to flight the thin, gauzy patches of vapor.

Just then the wagon started on up the incline, and the coachman left the box and walked beside the vehicle.

"My friend," said Canolles, "are you of this province?"

"Yes, monsieur, I am from Libourne."

"In that case you should know this village. What is yonder white house, and those pretty cottages?"

"The château, monsieur," was the reply, "is the manor house of Cambes, and the village is one of its dependencies."

Canolles started back, and his face instantly changed from the deepest red to deathly white.

"Monsieur," interposed Barrabas, whose round eye nothing escaped, "did you hurt yourself against the window?"

"No—thanks," said Canolles, and continued his examination of the peasant. "To whom does the property belong?" he asked.

"The Vicomtesse de Cambes."

"A young widow?"

"Very beautiful and very rich."

"And, consequently, much sought after?"

"Of course; a handsome dowry and a handsome woman; with that combination one doesn't lack suitors."

"Of good reputation?"

"Yes, but a furious partisan of the princes."

"I think I have heard so."

"A demon, monsieur, a downright demon!"

"An angel!" murmured Canolles, whose thoughts, whenever they recurred to Claire, recurred to her with transports of adoration,—"an angel!"

"Does she live here some of the time?" he inquired, raising his voice.

"Rarely, monsieur; but she did live here for a long while. Her husband left her here, and as long as she remained, her presence was a blessing to the whole countryside. Now she is said to be with the princess."

The carriage, having reached the top of the hill, was ready to go down again on the other side; the driver made a motion with his hand to ask permission to resume his place upon the box, and Canolles, who feared that he might arouse suspicion by continuing his questions, drew his head back into the lumbering vehicle, which started down hill at a slow trot, its most rapid gait.

After a quarter of an hour, during which time Canolles, still under the eye of Barrabas, was absorbed in gloomy reflection, the wagon halted again.

"Do we stop here for breakfast?" Canolles asked.

"We stop here altogether, monsieur. We have reached our destination. Yonder is Île Saint-Georges. We have only the river to cross now."

"True," muttered Canolles; "so near and yet so far!"

"Monsieur, some one is coming to meet us," said Barrabas; "be good enough to prepare to alight."

The second of Canolles' keepers, who was sitting on the box beside the driver, climbed down and unlocked the door, to which he had the key.

Canolles removed his eyes from the little white château, upon which he had kept them fixed, to the fortress which was to be his abode. He saw in the first place, on the other side of a swiftly flowing arm of the river, a ferry-boat, and beside it a guard of eight men and a sergeant. Behind them were the outworks of the citadel.

"Ah!" said Canolles to himself, "I am expected, it seems, and due precautions are taken.—Are those my new guards?" he asked Barrabas, aloud.

"I would be glad to answer monsieur's question intelligently; but really I have no idea."

At that moment, after exchanging signals with the sentinel on duty at the entrance to the fortress, the eight soldiers and the sergeant entered the ferry-boat, crossed the Garonne, and stepped ashore just as Canolles stepped to the ground.

Immediately the sergeant, seeing an officer, approached him and gave the military salute.

"Have I the honor of addressing Monsieur le Baron de Canolles, captain in the Navailles regiment?" he asked.

"Himself," replied Canolles, marvelling at the man's politeness.

The sergeant turned to his men, ordered them to present arms, and pointed with the end of his pike to the boat. Canolles took his place between his two guards, the eight men and the sergeant embarked after him, and the boat moved away from the shore, while Canolles cast a last glance at Cambes, which was just passing out of sight behind some rising ground.

The island was almost covered with scarps, counter-scarps, glaces, and bastions; a small fort in reasonably good condition overlooked all these outworks. The entrance was through an arched gateway, in front of which a sentinel was pacing back and forth.

"Qui vive?" he cried.

The little troop halted, the sergeant walked up to the sentinel, and said a few words to him.

"To arms!" cried the sentinel.

Immediately a score of men, who composed the picket, issued from a guard-house, and hastily drew up in line in front of the gateway.

"Come, monsieur," said the sergeant to Canolles. The drum began to beat.

"What does this mean?" said the young man to himself.

He walked toward the fort, quite at a loss to understand what was going on; for all these preparations resembled military honors paid to a superior much more than precautionary measures concerning a prisoner.

Nor was this all. Canolles did not notice that, just as he stepped from the carriage, a window in the governor's apartments was thrown open, and an officer stationed thereat watched attentively the movements of the boat and the reception given to the prisoner and his two keepers.

This officer, when Canolles stepped from the boat upon the island, hastily left the window, and hurried down to meet him.

"Aha!" said Canolles, as his eye fell upon him, "here comes the commandant to inspect his new boarder."

"I should say, monsieur," said Barrabas, "judging from appearances, that you'll not be left to languish a week in the anteroom like some people; you will be entered on the books at once."

"So much the better!" said Canolles.

Meanwhile the officer was drawing near. Canolles assumed the haughty, dignified attitude of a persecuted man.

A few steps from Canolles the officer removed his hat.

"Have I the honor of addressing Monsieur le Baron de Canolles?" he asked.

"Monsieur," the prisoner replied, "I am truly overwhelmed by your courtesy. Yes, I am Baron de Canolles; treat me, I beg you, as one officer might treat another, and assign me as comfortable quarters as possible."

"Monsieur," said the officer, "the place is not in the best of condition, but, as if in anticipation of your wishes, all possible improvements have been made."

"Whom should I thank for such unusual attention?" Canolles asked with a smile.

"The king, monsieur, who does well all that he does."

"To be sure, monsieur, to be sure. God forbid that I should slander his Majesty, especially on this occasion; I should not be sorry, however, to obtain certain information."

"If you so desire, monsieur, I am at your service; but I will take the liberty of reminding you that the garrison is waiting to make your acquaintance."

"Peste!" muttered Canolles, "a whole garrison to make the acquaintance of a prisoner who is to be shut up! Here's a deal of ceremony, I should say."

He added, aloud:—

"I am at your service, monsieur, and ready to follow you wherever you choose to take me."

"Permit me then to walk in advance to do the honors."

Canolles followed him, congratulating himself upon having fallen into the hands of so courteous a gentleman.

"I fancy you will be let off with the ordinary question, only four pots of water," Barrabas whispered in his ear.

"So much the better," said Canolles. "I shall swell up only half as much."

When they reached the court-yard of the citadel, Canolles found part of the garrison under arms. Thereupon the officer who escorted him drew his sword and saluted him.

"Mon Dieu! how tedious!" muttered Canolles.

At the same instant a drum beat under an archway near by. Canolles turned, and a second file of soldiers issued from the archway and took up a position behind the first.

The officer thereupon handed Canolles two keys.

"What does this mean?" the baron demanded; "what are you doing?"

"We are going through with the customary formalities in accordance with the most rigorous laws of military etiquette."

"For whom do you take me, in God's name?" exclaimed Canolles, amazed beyond expression.

"Why, for who you are,—for Monsieur le Baron de Canolles, Governor of Île Saint-Georges."

A cloud passed before Canolles' eyes, and he was near falling.

"I shall have the honor in a moment," continued the officer, "of turning over to Monsieur le Gouverneur his commission, which arrived this morning, accompanied by a letter announcing monsieur's arrival for to-day."

Canolles glanced at Barrabas, whose round eyes were fixed upon him with an expression of speechless amazement impossible to describe.

"So I am Governor of Île Saint-Georges?" faltered Canolles.

"Yes, monsieur, and his Majesty has made us very happy by his choice."

"You are sure that there's no mistake?"

"If you will deign to go with me to your apartments, monsieur, you will find there your commission."

Canolles, completely staggered by a dénouement so utterly different from that which he anticipated, followed the officer without a word, amid the beating of drums, soldiers presenting arms, and all the inhabitants of the fortress, who made the air resound with acclamations. Pale and excited, he saluted to right and left, and questioned Barrabas with dismayed glance.

At last he was introduced into a salon furnished with some pretensions to elegance, from the windows of which he noticed first of all that he could see the château de Cambes; and there he read his commission, drawn up in proper form, signed by the queen, and countersigned by the Duc d'Épernon.

At that sight Canolles' legs altogether failed him, and he fell helplessly upon a chair.

After all the fanfares and presenting arms and noisy demonstrations of respect in the military fashion, and after the first feeling of surprise which these demonstrations produced in him, Canolles was anxious to know just what to think with reference to the office the queen had bestowed upon him, and raised his eyes which for some time had been fastened upon the floor.

He then saw standing in front of him, no less thunderstruck than himself, his former keeper, become his very humble servant.

"Ah! is it you, Master Barrabas?" said he.

"Myself, Monsieur le Gouverneur."

"Will you explain what has happened? for I have all the difficulty in the world not to take it for a dream."

"I will explain to you, monsieur, that when I talked about the extraordinary question and the ten pots of water I thought, on my honor, that I was gilding the pill."

"You mean to say that you were convinced—?"

"That I was bringing you here to be broken on the wheel, monsieur."

"Thanks!" said Canolles, shuddering in spite of himself. "But have you any opinion now as to what has happened?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Do me the favor to tell me what it is, monsieur."

"It is this, monsieur. The queen must have realized what a difficult mission it was that she intrusted to you. As soon as the first angry outburst had spent itself, she must have repented, and as you are not a repulsive fellow, all things considered, her gracious Majesty has thought fit to reward you because she had punished you too severely."

"Impossible!" said Canolles.

"Impossible, you think?"

"Improbable, at least."

"Improbable?"

"Yes."

"In that case, monsieur, it only remains for me to offer you my very humble respects. You can be as happy as a king at Île Saint-Georges,—excellent wine, abundance of game, and fresh fish at every tide, brought by boats from Bordeaux and by the women of Saint-Georges. Ah, monsieur, this is a miraculous ending!"

"Very good; I will try to follow your advice. Take this order signed by myself, and go to the paymaster, who will give you ten pistoles. I would give them to you myself, but since you took all my money as a measure of precaution—"

"And I did well, monsieur," cried Barrabas; "for if you had succeeded in corrupting me you would have fled, and if you had fled you would naturally have sacrificed the elevated position which you have now attained, and I should never have forgiven myself."

"Very cleverly argued, Master Barrabas. I have already noticed that you are a past master in logic. But take this paper as a token of my appreciation of your eloquence. The ancients, you know, represented Eloquence with chains of gold issuing from her mouth."

"Monsieur," rejoined Barrabas, "if I dared I would remark that I think it useless to call upon the paymaster—"

"What! you refuse?" cried Canolles.

"No, God forbid! I have no false pride, thank Heaven! But I can see certain strings, which look to me much like purse-strings, protruding from a box on your chimney-piece."

"You are evidently a connoisseur in strings, Master Barrabas," said Canolles. "We will see if your previsions are correct."

There was a casket of old faience, incrusted with silver, upon the chimney-piece. Canolles raised the lid, and found within, a purse, and in the purse a thousand pistoles with this little note:—

"For the privy purse of Monsieur le Gouverneur of Île Saint-Georges."

"Corbleu!" said Canolles, blushing; "the queen does things very well."

Instinctively the thought of Buckingham came into his mind. Perhaps the queen had seen the handsome features of the young captain from behind some curtain; perhaps a tender interest in him led her to extend her protecting influence over him. Perhaps—We must remember that Canolles was a Gascon.

Unfortunately, the queen was twenty years older than in Buckingham's time.

Whatever the explanation, wherever the purse came from, Canolles put his hand in it and took out ten pistoles, which he handed to Barrabas, who left the room with a profusion of most respectful reverences.

---

X.

When Barrabas had gone, Canolles summoned the officer, and requested him to act as his guide in the inspection he proposed to make of his new dominions.

The officer at once placed himself at his command.

At the door he found a sort of staff composed of the other principal functionaries of the citadel. Escorted by them, talking with them, and listening to descriptions of all the half-moons, casemates, cellars, and attics, the morning wore away, and about eleven o'clock he returned to his apartments, having made a thorough inspection. His escort disappeared, and Canolles was left alone with the officer whose acquaintance he had first made.

"Now," said that officer, drawing near him with an air of mystery, "there remains but a single apartment and a single person for Monsieur le Gouverneur to see."

"I beg your pardon?" said Canolles.

"That person's apartment is yonder," said the officer, pointing to a door which Canolles had not yet opened.

"Ah! it is yonder, is it?"

"Yes."

"And the person too?

"Yes."

"Very well. Pardon me, I beg, but I am greatly fatigued, having travelled night and day, and my head's not very clear this morning; so pray explain your meaning a little more fully."

"Well, Monsieur le Gouverneur," rejoined the officer, with a most knowing smile, "the apartment—"

"—of the person—" said Canolles.

"—who awaits you, is yonder. You understand now, don't you?"

Canolles started, as if he were returning from the land of dreams.

"Yes, yes. Very good," said he; "and I may go in?"

"To be sure, as you are expected."

"Here goes, then!" said Canolles; and with his heart beating fit to burst its walls, hardly able to see, his fears and his desires inextricably confused in his mind, he opened the door and saw behind the hangings, with laughing face and sparkling eyes, Nanon de Lartigues, who cried out with joy, as she threw her arms around the young man's neck.

Canolles stood like a statue, with his arms hanging at his sides, and lifeless eye.

"You?" he faltered.

"I!" said she, redoubling her smiles and kisses.

The remembrance of the wrong he had done her passed through Canolles' mind, and as he divined instantly that he owed to this faithful friend his latest good-fortune, he was utterly crushed by the combined weight of remorse and gratitude.

"Ah!" said he; "you were at hand to save me while I was throwing myself away like a madman; you were watching over me; you are my guardian angel."

"Don't call me your angel, for I am a very devil," said Nanon; "but I appear only at opportune times, you will admit."

"You are right, dear friend; in good sooth, I believe that you have saved me from the scaffold."

"I think so too. Ah! baron, how could you, shrewd and far-sighted as you are, ever allow yourself to be taken in by those conceited jades of princesses?"

Canolles blushed to the whites of his eyes; but Nanon had adopted the plan of not noticing his embarrassment.

"In truth," said he, "I don't know. I can't understand myself."

"Oh, they are very cunning! Ah, messieurs, you choose to make war on women! What's this I have heard? They showed you, in place of the younger princess, a maid of honor, a chambermaid, a log of wood—what was it?"

Canolles felt the fever rising from his trembling fingers to his confused brain.

"I thought it was the princess," he said; "I didn't know her."

"Who was it, pray?"

"A maid of honor, I think."

"Ah, my poor boy! it's that traitor Mazarin's fault. What the devil! when a man is sent upon a delicate mission like that, they should give him a portrait. If you had had or seen a portrait of Madame la Princesse, you would certainly have recognized her. But let us say no more about it. Do you know that that awful Mazarin, on the pretext that you had betrayed the king, wanted to throw you to the toads?"

"I suspected as much."

"But I said: 'Let's throw him to the Nanons.' Did I do well? Tell me!"

Preoccupied as he was with the memory of the viscountess, and although he wore the viscountess's portrait upon his heart, Canolles could not resist the bewitching tenderness, the charming wit that sparkled in the loveliest eyes in the world; he stooped and pressed his lips upon the pretty hand which was offered him.

"And you came here to await me?"

"I went to Paris to find you, and bring you here. I carried your commission with me. The separation seemed very long and tedious to me, for Monsieur d'Épernon alone fell with his full weight upon my monotonous life. I learned of your discomfiture. By the way, I had forgotten to tell you; you are my brother, you know."

"I thought so from reading your letter."

"Yes, somebody betrayed us. The letter I wrote you fell into bad hands. The duke arrived in a rage. I told him your name, and that you were my brother, poor Canolles; and we are now united by the most legitimate bond. You are almost my husband, my poor boy."

Canolles yielded to her incredible powers of fascination. Having kissed her white hands he kissed her black eyes. The ghost of Madame de Cambes should have taken flight, veiling her eyes in sorrow.

"After that," continued Nanon, "I laid my plans, and provided for everything. I made of Monsieur d'Épernon your patron, or rather your friend. I turned aside the wrath of Mazarin. Lastly, I selected Saint-Georges as a place of retirement, because, dear boy, you know, they are forever wanting to stone me. Dear Canolles, you are the only soul in the whole world who loves me ever so little. Come, tell me that you love me!"

And the captivating siren, throwing her arms about the young man's neck, gazed ardently into his eyes, as if she would read to the very depths of his heart.

Canolles felt in his heart, which Nanon was seeking to read, that he could not remain insensible to such boundless devotion. A secret presentiment told him that there was something more than love in Nanon's feeling for him, that there was generosity too, and that she not only loved him, but forgave him.

He made a motion of his head which answered her question; for he would not have dared to say with his lips that he loved her, although at the bottom of his heart all his memories pleaded in her favor.

"And so I made choice of Île Saint-Georges," she continued, "as a safe place for my money, my jewelry, and my person. 'What other than the man I love,' I said to myself, 'can defend my life? What other than my master can guard my treasures?' Everything is in your hands, my own love,—my life and my wealth. Will you keep a jealous watch over it all? Will you be a faithful friend and faithful guardian?"

At that moment a bugle rang out in the court-yard, and awoke a sympathetic vibration in Canolles' heart. He had before him love, more eloquent than it had ever been; a hundred yards away was war,—war, which inflames and intoxicates the imagination.

"Yes, Nanon, yes!" he cried. "Your person and your treasure are safe in my hands, and I would die, I swear it, to save you from the slightest danger."

"Thanks, my noble knight," said she; "I am as sure of your courage as of your nobleness of heart. Alas!" she added with a smile, "I would I were as sure of your love."

"Oh!" murmured Canolles, "you may be sure—"

"Very well, very well," said Nanon, "love is proved by deeds, not by oaths; by what you do, monsieur, we will judge of your love."

Throwing the loveliest arms in the world around Canolles' neck, she laid her head against his throbbing breast.

"Now, he must forget," she said to herself, "and he will forget—"

XI.

On the day that Canolles was arrested at Jaulnay, under the eyes of Madame de Cambes, she set out with Pompée to join Madame la Princesse, who was in the neighborhood of Coutras.

The worthy squire's first care was to try and prove to his mistress that the failure of Cauvignac's band to hold the fair traveller to ransom, or to commit any act of violence in her regard, was to be attributed to his resolute bearing, and his experience in the art of war. To be sure, Madame de Cambes was less easily convinced than Pompée hoped would be the case, and called his attention to the fact that for something more than an hour he had entirely disappeared; but Pompée explained to her that during that time he was hiding in a corridor, where he had prepared everything for the viscountess's flight, having a ladder in readiness; but he was compelled to maintain an unequal struggle with two frantic soldiers, who tried to take the ladder away from him; the which he did, of course, with his well-known indomitable courage.

This conversation naturally led Pompée to bestow a warm eulogium upon the soldiers of his day, who were savage as lions in face of the enemy, as they had proved at the siege of Montauban and the battle of Corbie; but gentle and courteous to their compatriots,—qualities of which the soldiers of that day could hardly boast, it must be confessed.

The fact is that, without suspecting it, Pompée narrowly escaped a great danger, that of being kidnapped. As he was strutting about, as usual, with gleaming eyes, puffed-out chest, and the general appearance of a Nimrod, he fell under Cauvignac's eye; but, thanks to subsequent events; thanks to the two hundred pistoles he had received from Nanon to molest no one save Baron de Canolles; and thanks to the philosophical reflection that jealousy is the most magnificent of passions, and must be treated with respect when one finds it in his path, the dear brother passed Pompée disdainfully by, and allowed Madame de Cambes to continue her journey to Bordeaux. Indeed, in Nanon's eyes Bordeaux was very near Canolles. She would have been glad to have the viscountess in Peru or Greenland or the Indies.

On the other hand, when Nanon reflected that henceforth she would have her dear Canolles all to herself within four strong walls, and that excellent fortifications, inaccessible to the king's soldiers, made a prisoner of Madame de Cambes to all intent, her heart swelled with the unspeakable joy which none but children and lovers know on this earth.

We have seen how her dream was realized, and Nanon and Canolles were united at Île Saint-Georges.

Madame de Cambes pursued her journey sadly and fearfully. Notwithstanding his boasting, Pompée was very far from reassuring her, and she was terrified beyond measure to see a considerable party of mounted-men approaching along a cross-road, toward evening of the day that she left Jaulnay.

They were the same gentlemen returning from the famous burial of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, which afforded Monsieur le Prince de Marsillac an opportunity, under the pretext of rendering due honor to his father's memory, to get together all the nobility of France and Picardy, who hated Mazarin even more than they loved the princess. But Madame de Cambes and Pompée were struck by the fact that some of these horsemen carried an arm in a sling; others had a leg hanging limp and swathed in bandages; several had bloody bandages around their heads. It was necessary to look very closely at these cruelly maltreated gentlemen to recognize in them the active, spruce cavaliers who hunted the stag in the park at Chantilly.

But fear has keen eyes; and Pompée and Madame de Cambes recognized some familiar faces under the bloody bandages.

"Peste! madame," said Pompée, "the funeral procession must have travelled over very rough roads. I should say that most of these gentlemen had had a fall! see how they've been curried."

"That's just what I was looking at," said Claire.

"It reminds me of the return from Corbie," said Pompée, proudly; "but on that occasion I was not among the gallant fellows who returned, but among those who were brought back."

"But aren't these gentlemen commanded by any one?" Claire asked, in some anxiety as to the success of an enterprise which seemed to have had such inauspicious results. "Have they no leader? Has their leader been slain, that we do not see him? Pray look!"

"Madame," replied Pompée, rising majestically in his stirrups, "nothing is easier than to distinguish a leader among the people he commands. Ordinarily, on the march, the officer rides in the centre, with his staff; in action, he rides behind or on the flank of his troop. Cast your eyes at the different points that I mention and you can judge for yourself."

"I can see nothing, Pompée; but I think that some one is following us. Pray look back—"

"Hm! no, madame," said Pompée, clearing his throat, but omitting to turn his head lest he might really see some one. "No, there is nobody. But, stay, may that not be the leader with that red plume? No. That gilded sword? No. That piebald horse like Madame de Turenne's? No. It's a strange thing; there's no danger, and the commanding officer might venture to show himself; it isn't here as it was at Corbie—"

"You are mistaken, Master Pompée," said a harsh, mocking voice behind the poor squire, who nearly lost his seat in his fright; "you are mistaken, it's much worse than at Corbie."

Claire quickly turned her head, and saw within five feet of her a horseman of medium stature, dressed with an affectation of simplicity, who was looking at her with a pair of small, gleaming eyes, as deep set as a ferret's. "With his thick, black hair, his thin, twitching lips, his bilious pallor, and his frowning brow, this gentleman had a depressing effect even in broad daylight; at night his appearance would perhaps have inspired fear.

"Monsieur le Prince de Marsillac!" cried Claire, deeply moved. "Ah! well met, monsieur."

"Say Monsieur le Duc de La Rochefoucauld, madame; for now that the duke my father is dead I have succeeded to that name, under which all the actions of my life, good or bad, are to be set down."

"You are returning?" said Claire, with some hesitation.

"We are returning beaten, madame."

"Beaten! great Heaven!"

"I say that we are returning beaten, madame, because I am naturally little inclined to boast, and I tell the truth to myself as well as to others; otherwise I might claim that we are returning victorious; but, in point of fact, we are beaten because our design upon Saumur failed. I arrived too late; we have lost that important place, which Jarzé has surrendered. Henceforth, assuming that Madame la Princesse has Bordeaux, which has been promised her, the war will be concentrated in Guyenne."

"But, monsieur," said Claire, "if, as I understand you to say, the capitulation of Saumur took place without a blow, how does it happen that all these gentleman are wounded?"

"Because," said La Rochefoucauld, with pride, which he could not conceal, despite his power over himself, "we fell in with some royal troops."

"And you fought with them?" demanded Madame de Cambes, eagerly.

"Mon Dieu! yes, madame."

"So the first French blood has already been spilled by Frenchmen!" murmured the viscountess. "And you, Monsieur le Duc, were the one to set the example?"

"I was, madame."

"You, so calm and cool and shrewd!"

"When one upholds an unjust cause against me it sometimes happens that I become very unreasonable because I am so earnest in my support of what is reasonable."

"You are not wounded, I trust?"

"No, I was more fortunate this time than at Lignes and Paris. Indeed, I thought that I had had my fill of civil war, and was done with it forever; but I was mistaken. What would you have? Man always forms his plans without consulting his passions, the true architects of his life, which give an entirely different shape to the structure, when they do not overturn it altogether."

Madame de Cambes smiled, for she remembered that Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld had said that for Madame de Longueville's lovely eyes he had made war on kings, and would make war on the gods.

This smile did not escape the duke, and he gave the viscountess no time to follow up the thought which gave it birth.

"Allow me to offer you my congratulations, madame," he continued, "for you are, in truth, a very model of valor."

"Why so?"

"Good lack! to travel thus alone, or with a single attendant, like a Clorinda or a Bradamante! Oh! by the way, I have heard of your admirable conduct at Chantilly. They tell me that you fooled a poor devil of a royal officer to perfection. An easy victory, was it not?" added the duke, with the smile and the look which, upon his face, meant so much.

"How so?" Claire asked with emotion.

"I say easy," continued the duke, "because he did not fight on equal terms with you. There was one thing, however, that impressed me particularly in the version that was given me of that episode,"—and the duke fixed his little eyes upon the viscountess more sharply than ever.

There was no way for Madame de Cambes to retreat with honor, so she prepared to make as vigorous a defence as possible.

"Tell me what it was that struck you so forcibly, Monsieur le Duc," said she.

"It was the very great skill, madame, with which you played that little comic part; in fact, if I am to believe what I hear, the officer had already seen your squire and yourself."

These last words, although uttered with the studied indifference of a man of tact, did not fail to produce a deep impression upon Madame de Cambes.

"He had seen me, monsieur, do you say?"

"One moment, madame; let us understand each other; it's not I who say it, but that indefinite personage called 'they' to whose power kings are as submissive as the lowest of their subjects."

"Where had he seen me, may I ask?"

"They say that it was on the way from Libourne to Chantilly, at a village called Jaulnay; but the interview was cut short, as the gentleman received an order from Monsieur d'Épernon to start at once for Mantes."

"But if this gentleman had seen me before, Monsieur le Duc, how could he have failed to recognize me?"

"Ah! the famous they of whom I spoke just now, and who have an answer for every question, would say that the thing was possible, as the interview took place in the dark."

"Really, Monsieur le Duc," said the viscountess, in dismay, "I am at a loss to understand what you mean by that."

"In that case," rejoined the duke, with assumed good-nature, "I must have been ill-informed; and then, what does a mere momentary encounter amount to, after all? It is true, madame," he added gallantly, "that your face and figure are calculated to leave a deep impression, even after an interview lasting only an instant."

"But that would not be possible," the viscountess retorted, "if, as you yourself say, the interview took place in the dark."

"Very true, and you parry cleverly, madame. I must be the one who is mistaken, then, unless the young man had noticed you even before the interview at Jaulnay, which in that case would not be precisely a meeting."

"What would it be, then? Be careful of your words, Monsieur le Duc."

"As you see, I am hesitating; our dear French language is so poor that I seek in vain for a word to express my thought. It would be what is called, in Italian, an appuntamento; in English, an assignation."

"If I am not mistaken, Monsieur le Duc," said Claire, "those two words are translated in French by rendez-vous?"

"Go to!" exclaimed the duke; "here I have said a foolish thing in two foreign languages, and lo! I stumble upon a person who understands them both! Pardon me, madame; it seems that Italian and English are as poor as French."

Claire pressed her hand to her heart to breathe more freely; she was suffocating. One thing was made clear to her mind which she had always suspected; namely, that Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld had for her been unfaithful to Madame de Longueville, in thought and in desire at least, and that it was a feeling of jealousy which led him to speak as he had been speaking. In fact, two years before, the Prince de Marsillac had paid court to her as assiduously as was consistent with his crafty nature, and his constant indecision and timidity, which made him the most vindictive of foes, when he was not the most grateful of friends. So it was that the viscountess preferred not to break a lance with the man who held public and private affairs in the hollow of his hand.

"Do you know, Monsieur le Duc," said she, "that you are an invaluable man, especially under circumstances like the present; and that Monsieur de Mazarin, much as he prides himself upon his police, is no better served in that regard than yourself?"

"If I knew nothing, madame," retorted Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld, "I should resemble that dear statesman too closely, and should have no reason for making war upon him. And so I try to keep myself posted on everything."

"Even the secrets of your allies, if they have any?"

"You used a word then which might be construed to your disadvantage, if it should be overheard,—'secrets.' So that journey and that meeting were secrets, were they?"

"Let us understand each other, Monsieur le Duc, for you are no more than half right. The meeting was an accident. The journey was a secret, yes, and a woman's secret too, for it was known to none but Madame la Princesse and myself."

The duke smiled. This sturdy defence made him sharpen up his own wits.

"And to Lenet," he said, "and Richon, and Madame de Tourville, to say nothing of a certain Vicomte de Cambes, whose name I heard for the first time in connection with this matter. To be sure, as he is your brother, you might tell me that the secret was all in the family."

Claire began to laugh, to avoid irritating the duke, whose smile was beginning to show signs of vanishing.

"Do you know one thing, duke?" said she.

"No, tell it me; and if it is a secret, madame, I promise to be as discreet as yourself, and tell it to no one but my staff."

"Do as you please about that; I ask nothing better, although I thereby run the risk of making an enemy of a great princess, whose hatred would be no pleasant thing to incur."

The duke blushed imperceptibly.

"Well, what is this secret?" said he.

"Do you know whom Madame la Princesse selected for my companion in the journey I was asked to undertake?"

"No,"

"Yourself."

"Indeed! I remember that Madame la Princesse asked me if I could act as escort to a person returning from Libourne to Paris."

"And you refused?"

"I was unavoidably detained in Poitou by important business."

"Yes, you had to receive couriers from Madame de Longueville."

La Rochefoucauld gazed earnestly at the viscountess, as if to search the lowest depths of her heart before the trace of her words had disappeared, and said, riding closer to her side: "Do you reproach me for it?"

"Not at all; your heart is so well disposed in that place, Monsieur le Duc, that you have a right to expect compliments rather than reproaches."

"Ah!" said the duke, with an involuntary sigh; "would to God I had made that journey with you!"

"Why so?"

"Because then I should not have gone to Saumur," he replied, in a tone which indicated that he had another response ready, which he did not dare, or did not choose, to make.

"Richon must have told him everything," thought Claire.

"However, I do not repine at my private ill-fortune, since it has resulted to the public good."

"What do you mean, monsieur? I do not understand you."

"I mean that if I had been with you, you would not have fallen in with the officer, who happened, so clear it is that Heaven is on our side, to be the same one sent by Mazarin to Chantilly."

"Ah! Monsieur le Duc," said Claire, in a voice choked by the memory of the harrowing scene so recently enacted, "do not jest concerning that unfortunate officer!"

"Why? Is his person sacred?"

"Now, yes; for to noble hearts great misfortunes are no less sanctified than great good-fortune. That officer may be dead at this hour, monsieur, and he will have paid for his error, or his devotion, with his life."

"Dead with love?" queried the duke.

"Let us speak seriously, monsieur; you are well aware that if I give my heart away it will not be to people whom I meet on the high-road. I tell you that the unhappy man was arrested this very day by order of Monsieur de Mazarin."

"Arrested!" exclaimed the duke. "How do you know that?—still by accident?"

"Mon Dieu, yes! I was passing through Jaulnay—Do you know Jaulnay, monsieur?"

"Perfectly; I received a sword-cut in the shoulder there. You were passing through Jaulnay. Why, wasn't that the village where, as the story goes—?"

"Let us have done with the story, Monsieur le Duc," replied Claire, blushing. "I was passing through Jaulnay, as I tell you, when I saw a party of armed men halting with a prisoner in their midst; the prisoner was he."

"He, do you say? Ah! madame, take care, you said he!"

"The officer, I mean. Mon Dieu! Monsieur le Duc, how deep you are! A truce to your subtleties, and if you have no pity for the poor fellow—"

"Pity! I!" cried the duke. "In God's name, madame, have I time to have pity, especially for people I do not know?"

Claire cast a sidelong glance at La Rochefoucauld's pale face, and his thin lips curled by a joyless smile, and she shuddered involuntarily.

"Madame," he continued, "I would be glad to have the honor of escorting you farther; but I must throw a garrison into Montrond, so forgive me if I leave you. Twenty gentlemen, more fortunate than I, will look to your safety until you have joined Madame la Princesse, to whom I beg you to present my respects."

"Are you not going to Bordeaux?" Claire asked.

"No; just now I am on my way to Turenne to join Monsieur de Bouillon. We are engaged in a contest of courtesy to see which shall not be general; he's a doughty antagonist, but I am determined to get the better of him, and remain his lieutenant."

Upon that the duke ceremoniously saluted the viscountess and rode slowly away in the direction taken by his little band of horsemen. Claire followed him with her eyes, murmuring:—

"His pity! I invoked his pity! He spoke the truth; he has no time to feel pity."

A group of horsemen left the main body and came toward her, while the rest rode into the woods near by.

Behind them, with his reins over his horse's neck, La Rochefoucauld rode dreamily along, the man of the false look and the white hands, who wrote at the head of his memoirs this sentence, which sounds strangely enough in the mouth of a moral philosopher:—

"I think that one should content himself with making a show of compassion, but should be careful to have none. It is a passion which serves no useful purpose within a well-constituted mind, which serves only to weaken the heart, and which should be left to the common people, who, as they never do anything by reason, need to have passion in order to do anything."

Two days later Madame de Cambes was in attendance upon Madame la Princesse.

---

XII.

Many, many times had Madame de Cambes instinctively reflected upon what might be the result of a hatred like Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld's; but feeling strong in her youth, her beauty, her wealth, and her high favor, she did not realize that that hatred, supposing it to exist, was likely to have a baleful effect upon her life.

But when Madame de Cambes knew beyond question that she occupied a sufficient place in his thoughts to lead him to take the trouble to find out all that he knew, she lost no time in broaching the subject to Madame la Princesse.

"Madame," said she, in reply to the compliments with which she was overwhelmed, "do not congratulate me overmuch upon the address which I am said to have exhibited upon that occasion; for there are those who claim that the officer, our dupe, knew the real state of the case as to the true and the false Princesse de Condé."

But as this supposition deprived Madame la Princesse of all credit for her part in the execution of the stratagem, she naturally refused to listen to it.

"Yes, yes, my dear Claire," said she; "now that our gentleman finds that we deceived him, he would be glad to pretend that he favored our plans; unfortunately, it's a little late to make that claim, as he has been disgraced for his fiasco. à propos, I am told that you fell in with Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld on your way hither."

"Yes, madame."

"What news did he tell you?"

"That he was going to Turenne, to come to terms with Monsieur de Bouillon."

"There is a struggle between them, I know, as to which of the two shall be generalissimo of our armies, both making a show of declining the honor. The fact is that when we make peace, the man who has made himself most feared as a rebel will have to pay the heaviest price for his return to favor. But I have a plan of Madame de Tourville's to bring them to terms."

"Oho!" said the viscountess, smiling at that name; "your Highness is reconciled, I judge, to your counsellor in ordinary."

"I was driven to it; she joined us at Montrond, carrying her roll of papers with a gravity which made Lenet and myself almost die of laughing.

"'Although your Highness,' she said, 'pays no attention to these reflections of mine, the fruit of many laborious nights' work, I bring my contribution to the general welfare.'"

"Was it a veritable harangue?"

"Under three heads."

"And your Highness replied to it?"

"Not I; I left that to Lenet. 'Madame,' said he, 'we have never doubted your zeal, still less your extensive knowledge; they are both so invaluable to us that Madame la Princesse and I have regretted your absence every day.' In a word, he said a multitude of such pleasant things to her that he won her heart, and she ended by giving him her plan."

"Which is—?"

"To appoint neither Monsieur de Bouillon nor Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld generalissimo, but Monsieur de Turenne."

"Well," said Claire, "it seems to me that the counsellor counselled wisely then, at all events; what do you say to it, Monsieur Lenet?"

"I say that Madame la Vicomtesse is right, and that she brings one more judicious voice to our deliberations," replied Lenet, who entered the room at that moment with a roll of paper, and with as serious an expression as Madame de Tourville's face could have worn. "Unfortunately, Monsieur de Turenne cannot leave the army of the North, and our plan provides for his marching upon Paris when Mazarin and the queen march upon Bordeaux."

"You will notice, my dear girl, that Lenet is the man of impossibilities. In fact, neither Monsieur de Bouillon, nor Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, nor Monsieur de Turenne is our generalissimo, but Lenet!—What has your Excellency there,—a proclamation?"

"Yes, madame."

"Madame de Tourville's, of course?"

"Of course, madame; except for a few necessary changes, in her own words,—the style of the chancellor's office, you know."

"Nonsense!" said the princess, laughing; "let us not attach too much importance to the letter: if the spirit is there, that is all we need."

"It is there, madame."

"And where is Monsieur de Bouillon to sign?"

"On the same line with Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld."

"But you do not tell me where Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld will sign."

"Immediately below Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien."

"Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien should not sign such a document. A child!—think of it, Lenet."

"I have thought of it, madame. When the king dies, the dauphin succeeds him, though it be but for a single day. Why should it not be with the house of Condé as with the house of France?"

"But what will Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld say? What will Monsieur de Bouillon say?"

"The first has said, madame, and went away after he had said; the second will know nothing about it until it is done, and consequently will say what he pleases; it matters little."

"There is the cause of the duke's coolness to you, Claire."

"Let him be cool, madame," said Lenet; "he will warm up at the first gun Maréchal de la Meilleraie fires upon us. These gentlemen long to fight: very well, let them fight."

"Be careful not to irritate them too far, Lenet," said the princess; "we have only them."

"And they have only your name; just let them try to fight on their own account, and you will see how long they will hold out; give and take."

Madame de Tourville had entered the room a few seconds before, and the radiant expression of her countenance had given place to an anxious expression, which was deepened by the last words of her rival, the councillor.

She stepped forward hastily.

"Is the plan I laid before your Highness," she said, "so unfortunate as not to meet the approval of Monsieur Lenet?"

"On the contrary, madame," Lenet replied with a bow, "I have carefully retained the larger part of your draft; the only difference is that, instead of being signed in chief by the Duc de Bouillon or the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, the proclamation will be signed by Monseigneur le Duc d'Enghien; the names of those gentlemen will come after the prince's name."

"You will compromise the young prince, monsieur."

"It is only just that he should be compromised, madame, since the troops are fighting for him."

"But the Bordelais love the Duc de Bouillon, they adore the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, and they do not know the Duc d'Enghien."

"You are wrong," said Lenet, as usual taking a paper from that pocket whose enormous capacity had amazed Madame la Princesse, "for here is a letter from the President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, in which he begs me to have the young duke sign the proclamation."

"Oh! a fig for the Parliaments, Lenet!" cried the princess; "it's not worth while to escape from the power of Monsieur de Mazarin if we are to fall into the power of the Parliaments."

"Does your Highness wish to enter Bordeaux?"

"To be sure."

"Very good; then that is the sine qua non; they will not burn a match for any other than Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien."

Madame de Tourville bit her lips.

"And so," said the princess, "you induced us to fly from Chantilly, you caused us to travel a hundred and fifty leagues, to expose us at the last to insult from the Bordelais?"

"What you style an insult, madame, is an honor. Indeed, what could be more flattering to Madame la Princesse de Condé than to be assured that it is she who is made welcome at Bordeaux, and not these others?"

"You say that the Bordelais will not receive the two dukes?"

"They will receive your Highness only."

"What can I do alone?"

"What! Mon Dieu!—go in, to be sure; and as you go in leave the gates open so that the others may enter behind you."

"We cannot do without them."

"That is my opinion, and a fortnight hence it will be the opinion of the Parliament. Bordeaux repulses your army, which it fears, and within a fortnight it will call upon it for defence. You will then have the twofold merit of having done twice what the Bordelais requested you to do; and when that is so, have no fear; they will face death for you from the first man to the last."

"Is Bordeaux threatened?" asked Madame de Tourville.

"Very seriously threatened," Lenet replied; "that is why it is of such pressing importance to effect a lodgment there. So long as we are not there, Bordeaux can, without compromising its honor, refuse to open its gates to us; but when we are once there, Bordeaux cannot, without dishonoring itself, drive us outside its walls."

"Who is threatening Bordeaux, pray?"

"The king, the queen, Monsieur de Mazarin. The royal forces are levying recruits; our enemies are getting into position. Île Saint-Georges, which is but three leagues from the city, has received a re-enforcement of troops, a fresh supply of ammunition, and a new governor. The Bordelais propose to try and take the island, and will naturally be beaten back, as they will have to do with the king's best troops. Having been well and duly whipped, as becomes peaceable citizens who undertake to mimic soldiers, they will cry out loudly for the Ducs de Bouillon and de La Rochefoucauld. Then, madame, you, who hold those two dukes in your hand, will make your own terms with the Parliament."

"But would it not be better to try and win this new governor over to our side, before the Bordelais have undergone a defeat, which may discourage them?"

"If you are in Bordeaux when this defeat is sustained, you have nothing to fear. As for winning over the governor, it's an impossibility."

"An impossibility! Why so?"

"Because he is a personal enemy of your Highness."

"A personal enemy?"

"Yes."

"Pray what is the cause of his enmity?"

"He will never forgive your Highness the mystification of which he was the victim at Chantilly. Oh! Monsieur de Mazarin is no such fool as you think him, mesdames, although I wear myself out by constant efforts to convince you of your error! He has proved it by sending to Île Saint-Georges, that is to say, the most advantageous position in the province—whom do you guess?"

"I have already told you that I cannot imagine who it can be."

"Well, it's the officer at whom you laughed so much, and who, with inconceivable stupidity, allowed your Highness to escape from Chantilly."

"Monsieur de Canolles?" cried Claire.

"Yes."

"Monsieur de Canolles governor of Île Saint-Georges?"

"Himself."

"Impossible! He was arrested before my very eyes!"

"True. But he has a powerful protector, no doubt, and his disgrace is changed to favor."

"And you fancied him dead ere this, my poor Claire," said Madame la Princesse, laughingly.

"Are you quite sure?" asked the viscountess, amazed beyond measure.

As usual, Lenet put his hand into the famous pocket and produced a paper.

"Here is a letter from Richon," he said, "giving me all the details of the new governor's installation, and expressing his regret that your Highness did not station him at Île Saint-Georges."

"Madame la Princesse station Monsieur Richon at Île Saint-Georges!" exclaimed Madame de Tourville, with a smile of triumph. "Pray, do we dispose of governor-ships of his Majesty's fortresses?"

"We can dispose of one, madame," Lenet replied, "and that is enough."

"Of what one, I pray to know?"

Madame de Tourville shuddered as she saw Lenet put his hand in his pocket.

"Monsieur d'Épernon's signature in blank!" cried the princess. "True; I had forgotten it."

"Bah! what does that amount to?" said Madame de Tourville, disdainfully. "A scrap of paper, nothing more."

"That scrap of paper, madame," said Lenet, "is the appointment we need as a counterpoise to the one recently made. It is a counterpoise to Île Saint-Georges; in fine, it is our salvation, for it means some place on the Dordogne, as Saint-Georges is on the Garonne."

"You are sure," said Claire, who had heard nothing for the last five minutes, and whose mind had remained stationary at the intelligence announced by Lenet and confirmed by Richon; "you are sure, monsieur, that it is the same Monsieur de Canolles who was arrested at Jaulnay, who is now governor of Île Saint-Georges?"

"I am sure of it, madame."

"Monsieur de Mazarin has a peculiar way," she continued, "of escorting his governors to their governments."

"True," said the princess, "and there certainly is something behind all this."

"To be sure there is," said Lenet; "there is Mademoiselle Nanon de Lartigues."

"Nanon de Lartigues!" cried Claire, stung to the heart by a terrible memory.

"That courtesan!" said the princess, with the utmost contempt.

"Yes, madame," said Lenet, "that courtesan, whom your Highness refused to see, when she solicited the honor of being presented to you, and whom the queen, less punctilious than yourself in matters of etiquette, did receive; which caused her to make answer to your chamberlain that it was possible that Madame la Princesse de Condé was a more exalted personage than Anne of Austria, but that Anne of Austria most assuredly had more prudence than the Princesse de Condé."

"Your memory is failing, Lenet, or else you wish to spare my feelings," cried the princess. "The insolent creature was not content to say 'more prudence,' she said 'more sense,' as well."

"Possibly," said Lenet, with a smile. "I stepped into the antechamber at that moment, and did not hear the end of the sentence."

"But I was listening at the door," said Madame la Princesse, "and I heard the whole of it."

"At all events you understand, madame, that it is a woman who will wage relentless war upon you. The queen would have sent soldiers to fight against you; Nanon will send insidious enemies, whom you must unearth and crush."

"Perhaps," said Madame de Tourville, sourly, to Lenet, "if you had been in her Highness's place you would have received her with reverential awe?"

"No, madame," said Lenet, "I would have received her with a smile, and would have bought her."

"Oh well, if it's a question of buying her, there is still time."

"Certainly there is still time; but at this time she would probably be too dear for our resources."

"How much is she worth?" the princess asked.

"Five hundred thousand livres before the war."

"But to-day?"

"A million."

"Why, for that price I could buy Monsieur de Mazarin!"

"'Tis possible," said Lenet; "things that have already been sold and resold are apt to grow cheaper."

"But, if we can't buy her, we must take her!" said Madame de Tourville, still in favor of violent measures.

"You would render her Highness an inestimable service, madame, could you attain that object; but it would be difficult of attainment, as we have absolutely no idea where she is. But let us leave that for the present; let us first of all effect an entrance into Bordeaux, then we will find a way into Île Saint-Georges."

"No, no!" cried Claire; "no, we will effect an entrance at Île Saint-Georges first!"

This exclamation, evidently from the heart, caused the other women to turn toward the viscountess, while Lenet gazed at her as earnestly as Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld could have done, but with a kindlier interest.

"Why, you are mad!" said the princess; "you have heard Lenet say that the place is impregnable!"

"That may be," said Claire, "but I think that we can take it."

"Have you a plan?" said Madame de Tourville, with the air of one who fears the erection of an altar in opposition to her own.

"Perhaps," said Claire.

"But," laughed the princess, "if Île Saint-Georges is held at so high a figure as Lenet says, perhaps we are not rich enough to buy it."

"We will not buy it," said Claire, "but we will have it all the same."

"By force, then," said Madame de Tourville; "my dear friend, you are coming around to my plan."

"That's it," said the princess. "We will send Richon to besiege Saint-Georges; he is of the province, he knows the locality, and if any man can take this fortress which you deem of such importance, he is the man."

"Before resorting to that means," said Claire, "let me try the experiment, madame. If I fail, then you can do as you think best."

"What!" said the amazed princess, "you will go to Île Saint-Georges?"

"I will."

"Alone?"

"With Pompée."

"You have no fear?"

"I will go as a flag of truce, if your Highness will deign to intrust me with your instructions."

"Upon my word! this is a novelty!" cried Madame de Tourville; "for my own part I should say that diplomatists do not spring up like this, and that one must have gone through a long course of study of that science, which Monsieur de Tourville, one of the greatest diplomatists, as he was one of the greatest soldiers of his time, declared to be the most difficult of all sciences."

"However ill-informed I may be," said Claire, "I will make the trial, nevertheless, if Madame la Princesse is pleased to allow me to do so."

"Certainly Madame la Princesse will allow you to do it," said Lenet, with a significant glance at Madame de Condé; "indeed, I am convinced that if there is any person on earth who can succeed in such a negotiation, you are that person."

"Pray what can madame do that another cannot do?"

"She will simply drive a bargain with Monsieur de Canolles, which a man could not do without getting himself thrown out of the window."

"A man if you please!" retorted Madame de Tourville; "but a woman?"

"If a woman is to go to Île Saint-Georges," said Lenet, "it is quite as well, indeed much better, that it should be madame rather than any other, because it is her idea."

At that moment a messenger entered, bringing a letter from the Parliament of Bordeaux.

"Ah!" cried the princess, "the reply to my request, I presume."

The two women drew near, impelled by a common sentiment of curiosity and interest. Lenet remained where he stood, as phlegmatic as always, knowing beforehand, in all probability, what the letter contained.

The princess read it with avidity.

"They ask me to come, they summon me, they expect me!" she cried.

"Ah!" ejaculated Madame de Tourville, triumphantly.

"But the dukes, madame, and the army?" queried Lenet.

"They say nothing of them."

"Then we are left destitute," said Madame de Tourville.

"No," said the princess; "for, thanks to the Duc d'Épernon's blank signature, I shall have Vayres, which commands the Dordogne."

"And I," said Claire, "shall have Saint-Georges, which is the key of the Garonne."

"And I," said Lenet, "shall have the dukes and the army,—that is, if you give me time."

END OF VOL. I.