I

It is Messire Enguerrand de Manuchet who tells us that on the 3rd day of April of this same year of grace 1581, Messire de Balagny, Maître de Camp to Monsieur Duc d'Anjou succeeded under cover of darkness in entering the city by the Landrecy road on the West, which was still—an you remember—clear of the Spanish investing armies. He came alone, having left his troop at La Fère, a matter of three leagues or so. Toward nine o'clock of the morning he made his way to the hostelry of 'Les Trois Rois,' where we may take it that Gilles de Crohin was mightily glad to see him. Messire de Balagny's advent was for the unfortunate prisoner like a breath of pure air, something coming to him from that outside world from which he had been shut out all these weary weeks; something, too, of the atmosphere of camps and of clean fighting in the open, which for the moment seemed to dissipate the heavy fumes of political intrigues, with its attendant deceits and network of lies, that were so abhorrent to the born soldier.

'I do not envy you your position, my dear friend,' Balagny said dryly, after he had discussed the whole situation with Gilles.

'My God!' responded Gilles with almost ludicrous fervour. 'It has been a positive hell!'

'Although Madame la Reyne de Navarre is very grateful to you for what you have done; she was only saying to me, before I left, that there was nothing she would not do for you in return.'

'Oh!' said Gilles with a careless laugh. 'The gratitude of a Queen...!!'

'This one is above all a woman,' broke in the older man earnestly. 'She is a Queen only by the accident of birth.'

'I know, I know,' Gilles went on, somewhat impatiently. 'But for the nonce Her Majesty has conferred the greatest possible boon upon me by releasing me from my post; and I, being more than satisfied, will ask nothing better of her. But what about His Highness?' he added, after a slight pause.

Balagny shrugged his shoulders.

'He does not mean to play us false?' insisted Gilles.

'Chien sabe?' was the other's enigmatic reply. 'Does one ever know what François, Duc d'Anjou, may or may not do?'

'But Madame la Reyne declares——'

'Madame la Reyne is blind where that favoured brother is concerned. But it is she who, even now, is moving heaven and earth to recruit the armies for the relief of Cambray—not he. As you know, brother Henri, King of France, will not stir a finger to help Monsieur conquer a possible kingdom, and Monsieur himself sits in his Palace in Paris, surrounded by women and young sycophants, idling away his time, wasting his substance, while his devoted sister wears herself out in his service.'

'Don't I know him!' concluded Gilles with a sigh. Then after awhile he added more lightly: 'Well, friend, shall we to the governor? He hath sent me a respectful but distinctly peremptory request this morning to present myself in person at the Archiepiscopal Palace.'

'The worthy Fleming is getting restive,' was de Balagny's dry comment.

'Naturally.'

'He wants to bring matters to a head.'

'To-day, apparently. He hath given me respite after respite. He will not wait any longer. Matters in this city are pretty desperate, my friend. And if Monsieur tarries with his coming much longer...'

De Balagny rose from his chair, and going up to Gilles, he placed a kindly hand on the younger man's shoulder.

'Monsieur will not tarry much longer,' he said earnestly. 'Madame la Reyne will see to that. Go to the governor, my good Gilles, and complete the work you have so ably begun. It was not pleasant work, I'll warrant, and there is little or no glory attached to it; but when you will have lived as many years as I have, you will realize that there is quite a deal of satisfaction to be derived out of inglorious work, if it be conscientiously done. And after to-day,' he added gaily, 'you will be free to garner a whole sheaf of laurels in the service of a grateful Queen and of a dissolute Prince.'

But Gilles was not in the humour to look on the bright side of his future career. He was fingering moodily the letter which Monseigneur the governor had sent him an hour or so ago. It was obviously intended to be the forerunner of the final decision which would throw Jacqueline—beautiful, exquisite Jacqueline of the merry blue eyes and the rippling laugh—into the arms of that same dissolute Prince of whom even de Balagny—his trusted Maître de Camp—spoke with so much bitterness.

'Were I a free agent,' d'Inchy said in his letter, 'I would not dream of asking Your Highness so signal a favour; but while Your Highness chooses to hide Your identity under a mask, and in an humble Abode altogether unworthy of Your rank, I have no option but to beg You most humbly to grace My own house with Your presence, in order that We may arrive at last to an irrevocable decision in the Matter which lies so closely to My heart.

Indeed the die was cast. Even Messire de Manuchet admits that Gilles could not do otherwise than present himself at the Palace in accordance with Monseigneur the governor's desire. De Balagny certainly did everything to cheer and encourage him.

'Will you not come with me?' Gilles asked of him, when he was ready to go. 'I could then present you at once to d'Inchy, and, please God! be myself out of Cambray ere the sun has begun to sink low in the West.'

But Balagny shook his head.

'You had best go alone, this once more,' he said firmly. 'Think of the coming interview as an affair of honour, my dear Gilles, and go to it as you would to a fight, with a bold front and unquaking heart. You will find it quite easy to confront the Fleming then.'

Gilles gripped the old man's hand with gratitude.

'You have put new life into me,' he said, with something of his habitual cheerfulness. 'Another few hours of this miserable business and I shall be free—free as air!' Then he added with a bitter sigh, which the other man did not quite know how to interpret: 'And I shall imagine myself as almost happy!'

After which, he sallied forth into the street with a firm and elastic step.