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.