I now rehearsed, as succinctly as I could, considering the agitation of my thoughts, my adventures with Marie Louise on our journey; omitting only such passages as I deemed might prove unnecessary, or unwelcome. When I concluded, her brother expressed much satisfaction, and gave me earnest thanks, adding that in everything, my relation agreed with that given by Mademoiselle to himself, and to the Duke.

'A further proof that she has not told them all,' thought I, again.

'Now that I have heard your story, and that those blustering Counts are gone elsewhere to swear and grumble over pots of Rhenish, or jugs of German beer,' said the gay Prince, filling up my wine-horn again, 'tell me, how are all my enemies, the good people of Paris? Marion de l'Orme, Ninon de l'Enclos, Louis le Juste (faugh!), and Anne of Austria; and how is Father Richelieu himself—the great master showman in red hat and stockings, who makes all these little marionettes to hop and dance whenever he pulls the political strings?'

'Marion is still surrounded by lovers, and Ninon ditto, having quite forgotten the Count de Poligni,' I replied, in the same bantering tone; 'Louis is still in the silken meshes of Clara d'Ische; Anne of Austria still makes confessions to Monseigneur, the Archbishop of Paris, and still powders, paints, and patches; and eats and drinks as usual with the regal voracity of a pike; while Richelieu, the Coadjutor's rival in her heart, still enrols regiments, and levies treasures, to carry the frontiers of France towards the Rhine.'

The expression of Vaudemont's face changed, and his eyes sparkled at these words.

'Louis, most falsely surnamed the Just, is a prince without honour, and without gratitude!' said he, flinging his empty silver cup upon the table; 'he is at once the slave and the tool of Cardinal Richelieu, whom he hates and fears, and yet obeys—Richelieu, the most stern and bloody minister that ever stained the annals of France!—and now to divert the attention of her people from the intrigues by which he is surrounded, and by which he, a presumptuous priest, has obtained all but the royal authority, he has plunged Louis into this wanton war with the Empire and Lorraine, on the bold plea, ever so pleasing to French vanity, that their frontier shall be the Rhine. Marched by Champagne, and bordered by the Rhine, with Burgundy on one hand, and Luxemburg on the other, doubtless my father's ancient dukedom presents a tempting morsel to our friend M. le Cardinal and his creatures—and to enable them to swallow this morsel with ease, he has poured five armies into Germany and Italy. But our people are brave, bold, and hardy; our valleys are covered by vineyards; our mountains teem with mines of the richest ore, and hence this old Lorraine of ours—this patrimony which we have inherited since the days of the Merovingian kings—forms a prize too valuable to be relinquished to the grasping house of Bourbon: and while we have a rial and a rapier left, with God's help and the Emperor's, we shall defend it!'

'Louis asserts that Lorraine belongs to him, because Charles the Simple united it to France in the tenth century, and made Regnier governor over it.'

'Pardieu—no! 'tis our devil of a Cardinal who asserts this. But France will not be content with her boundaries at the Rhine, and if so, where is this spirit to end? Since the days of Charles the Great, the French dominions have not had such prospects of extension as they have now by the schemes of Richelieu, who has cast his eyes on Lorraine, Alsace, Brissac, and Philipsburg. He has cast them over Flanders, towards Dunkirk; across the Pyrenees, and over Rousillon into Catalonia. The annexation of our duchy to France would bring her frontier forty leagues into the empire; it would make Louis XIII. master of all the land between the Saar and the Moselle; it would secure his possession of Burgundy, and open up his path to the Palatinate; but never while blood and breath remain to Duke Charles and his son will they submit to France, and place the coronet of their independent dukedom under the closed-crown of the imperious line of St. Louis! And now, M. Blane, for your own affairs. You must be aware, my friend, that the sooner you leave Nanci, the better for your honour and for your life. In the first place rumour may indulge in unpleasant surmises about your sojourn here; and in the second, I would have you to rejoin your comrades without delay, lest Pappenhem, this Æneas of ours who seeks a wife, and his fidus Achates, the Petardier, who seeks that, which is much the same, mischief—may work you evil; for they are at no pains to conceal their hostility.'

'Prince, you speak my very thoughts; I am, indeed, most anxious to be gone,' said I, though the prospect of leaving Nanci without a parting word from Marie Louise was agony to me; yet, fooled and deceived as I had been, what would a parting word avail me now? 'I will this night depart for the French camp; but I know not where my comrades are, or how far I have to travel.'

'Morbleu! you do not know where they are?'