An Enemy to the King / From the Recently Discovered Memoirs of the Sieur de la Tournoire

by Robert Neilson Stephens

When I was half-way down, I looked up. The wall of the palace seemed now to lean over upon me, and now to draw back from me. Marguerite was gazing down at me.

At last, looking down, I saw the earth near, and dropped. I cast another glance upward. Marguerite was just drawing in her head, and immediately the rope's end flew out of my reach.

"There's no going back the way I came!" I said, to myself, and strode along the moat to find a place where I could most easily climb out of it. Such a place I found, and I was soon in the street, alone, near where I had been wont to watch under the window of Mlle. d'Arency. I took a last look at the window of Marguerite's chamber. It was closed, and the rope had disappeared. My safety was no longer in the hands of the Queen of Navarre. She had pointed out the way for me, and had brought me thus far; henceforth, I had to rely on myself.

I shivered in the cold. I had left my large cloak beside the dead body of M. de Noyard the previous night, and had worn to the Louvre, in the morning, only a light mantle by way of outer covering.

"Blessings on the night for being so dark, and maledictions on it for being so cold!" I muttered, as I turned towards the river.

I had reached the Hôtel de Bourbon, when I heard, behind me, the sound of footsteps in accord. I looked back. It was a body of several armed men, two of them bearing torches.

Were they gendarmes of the watch, or were they guards of the King? What were they doing on my track, and had they seen me?

Probably they had not seen me, for they did not increase their gait, although they came steadily towards me. The torches, which illuminated everything near them, served to blind them to what was at a distance from them.

Fortunately, I had reached the end of the street, and so I turned eastward and proceeded along the quay, high walls on one side of me, the river on the other. It had been impossible for Marguerite to indicate to me the exact place at which the boat was to be in waiting. I did not think it best, therefore, to go to the edge of the quay and look for the boat while the soldiers were in the vicinity. They might come upon the quay at the moment of my embarking, and in that event, they would certainly investigate. So I walked on along the quay.

Presently I knew, by the sound of their steps, that they, too, had reached the quay, and that they had turned in the direction that I had taken. I was still out of the range of their torchlight.