'Hah!' said the old Marechal de Logis, with a grin, 'had our Scottish Guard been with Henry in lieu of his wretched French lacqueys, Ravaillac had never achieved the dreadful deed of that day!'
'And where were they?' asked the Viscount.
'They were marching towards the frontier, as a war was expected with Spain,' replied our veteran comrade, as we found ourselves in the Rue d'Ecosse, and at the sign of the Golden Fleur-de-lis, kept by Maître Pierre Omelette.
CHAPTER IX.
WE DINE AT THE FLEUR-DE-LIS.
This hotel was a picturesque old mansion having three sharp wooden gables that cut the blue sky overhead, and projected over the street on beams of grotesquely-carved wood, which rested on stone pillars, like some of the old timber-fronted houses of king James IV.'s time which I had seen at home. A large sign-board bearing a blue shield powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis swung on a rusty iron rod above the thoroughfare.
The arrival of six cavaliers all so showily attired—five of them at least being so—with plume and mantle, sword and dagger, and having, moreover, in their hats the white silver cross of St. Andrew, which in Paris was the distinguishing badge of that patrician band the Guard du Corps Ecossais, made the host bow at least eighteen successive times to the red rosettes of his garters as he ushered us into a plainly-furnished room, decorated by a few coarse Flemish engravings of the wars in Flanders—the siege of the Brielle and the fighting at the Isle Rhé. There were also two tawdry prints of the beautiful Ninon de l'Enclos, which the Chevalier Livingstone and Raynold Cheyne pronounced to be execrable likenesses, and proposed to tear down.
My friends being all gay fellows entered as noisily as a herd of scholars broken loose from school—all jokes and laughter—for in Paris all seemed to live as if their lives and joys were to last for ever, like those of the gods in Homer.
'By the devil's mercy, M. Fleur-de-lis, my brave bully host,' said the Marechal de Logis, 'but thy wife looks well and rosy!'
'As if she were a widow,' added the Chevalier Livingstone, pinching her chin.