'Very good,' my patron answered, quietly eyeing the faces behind the Provost-Marshal, as if he were making a note of them; which caused some of the gentlemen manifest uneasiness. 'That is soon seen, for we are even now about to seek speech with his Majesty.'
'Not this gentleman,' the Provost-Marshal answered firmly, raising his hand again. 'I can not let him pass.'
'Yes, this gentleman too, by your leave,' the Marquis retorted, lightly putting the hand aside with his cane.
'Sir,' said the other, retreating a step and speaking with some heat, 'this is no jest with all respect. I hold the king's own order, and it may not be resisted.'
The nobleman tapped his silver comfit-box and smiled. 'I shall be the last to resist it--if you have it,' he said languidly.
'You may read it for yourself,' the Provost-Marshal answered, his patience exhausted.
M. de Rambouillet took the parchment with the ends of his fingers, glanced at it, and gave it back. 'As I thought,' he said, 'a manifest forgery.'
'A forgery!' cried the officer, crimson with indignation. 'And I had it from the hands of the king's own secretary!' At this those behind murmured, some 'shame,' and some one thing, and some another--all with an air so threatening that the Marquis's gentlemen closed up behind him, and M. d'Agen laughed rudely.
But M. de Rambouillet remained unmoved. 'You may have had it from whom you please, sir,' he said. 'It is a forgery, and I shall resist its execution. If you choose to await me here, I will give you my word to render this gentleman to you within an hour, should the order hold good. If you will not wait, I shall command my servants to clear the way, and if ill happen, then the responsibility will lie with you.'
He spoke in so resolute a manner it was not difficult to see that something more was at stake than the arrest of a single man. This was so; the real issue was whether the king, with whose instability it was difficult to cope, should fall back into the hands of his old advisers or not. My arrest was a move in the game intended as a counterblast to the victory which M. de Rambouillet had gained when he persuaded the king to move to Tours; a city in the neighbourhood of the Huguenots, and a place of arms whence union with them would be easy.