I crouched and shivered. In St. Antoine's, at the mouth of the lane, a man was beating a drum preparatory to publishing a notice; and presently his voice caught my attention in the middle of my lamentations. I listened, at first idly, then with my mind. "Oyez! Oyez!" he cried. "Whereas some evil person, having no fear of God or of the law before his eyes, has impudently, feloniously, and treasonably stolen from the Palais Royal, a spaniel, the property of the Queen-Regent's most excellent Majesty, this is to say, that any one—rumble—rumble—rumble"—here a passing coach drowned some sentences—after which I caught—"five hundred crowns, the same to be paid by Monseigneur the Bishop of Beauvais, President of the Council!"
"And glad to pay it," snarled a voice, quite close to me. I started and looked up. Two men were talking at a grated window above my head. I could not see their faces.
"Yet it is a high price for a dog," the other sneered.
"But low for a queen. Yet it will buy her. And this is Richelieu's France!"
"Was!" the other said pithily. "Well, you know the proverb, my friend. 'A living dog is better than a dead lion.'"
"Ay," his companion rejoined, "but I have a fancy that that dog's name is spelt neither with an F for Flore—which was the whelp's name, was it not?—nor a B for Beauvais; nor a C for Condé; but with an M——"
"For Mazarin!" the other answered sharply. "Yes, if he find the dog. But Beauvais is in possession."
"Rocroy, a hit that counted for Condé shook him; you may be sure of that."
"Still he is in possession."
"So is my shoe in possession of my foot," was the keen reply. "And see—I take it off. Beauvais is tottering, I tell you; tottering. It wants but a shove, and he falls."