id="III"/>III

M. le Duc is well guarded.

stepped out briskly from the inn, pausing now and again to inquire my way to the Hôtel St. Quentin, which stood, I knew, in the Quartier Marais, where all the grand folk lived. Once I had found the broad, straight Rue St. Denis, all I need do was to follow it over the hill down to the river-bank; my eyes were free, therefore, to stare at all the strange sights of the great city—markets and shops and churches and prisons. But most of all did I gape at the crowds in the streets. I had scarce realized there were so many people in the world as passed me that summer morning in the Town of Paris. Bewilderingly busy and gay the place appeared to my country eyes, though in truth at that time Paris was at its very worst, the spirit being well-nigh crushed out of it by the sieges and the iron rule of the Sixteen.

I knew little enough of politics, and yet I was not so dull as not to see that great events must happen soon. A crisis had come. I looked at the people I passed who were going about their business so tranquilly. Every one of them must be either Mayenne's man, or Navarre's. Before a week was out these peaceable citizens might be using pikes for tools and exchanging bullets for good mornings. Whatever happened, here was I in Paris in the thick of it! My feet fairly danced under me; I could not reach the hôtel soon enough. Half was I glad of Monsieur's danger, for it gave me chance to show what stuff I was made of. Live for him, die for him—whatever fate could offer I was ready for.

The hôtel, when at length I arrived before it, was no disappointment. Here one did not wait till midday to see the sun; the street was of decent width, and the houses held themselves back with reserve, like the proud gentlemen who inhabited them. Nor did one here regret his possession of a nose, as he was forced to do in the Rue Coupejarrets.

Of all the mansions in the place, the Hôtel St. Quentin was, in my opinion, the most imposing; carved and ornamented and stately, with gardens at the side. But there was about it none of that stir and liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the great. No visitors passed in or out, and the big iron gates were shut, as if none were looked for. Of a truth, the persons who visited Monsieur these days preferred to slip in by the postern after nightfall, as if there had never been a time when they were proud to be seen in his hall.

Beyond the grilles a sentry, in the green and scarlet of Monsieur's men-at-arms, stood on guard, and I called out to him boldly.

He turned at once; then looked as if the sight of me scarce repaid him.

"I wish to enter, if you please," I said. "I am come to see M. le Duc."

"You?" he ejaculated, his eye wandering over my attire, which, none of the newest, showed signs of my journey.

"Yes, I," I answered in some resentment. "I am one of his men."

He looked me up and down with a grin.

"Oh, one of his men! Well, my man, you must know M. le Duc is not receiving to-day."

"I am Félix Broux," I told him.

"You may be Félix anybody for all it avails; you cannot see Monsieur."

"Then I will see Vigo." Vigo was Monsieur's Master of Horse, the staunchest man in France. This sentry was nobody, just a common fellow picked up since Monsieur left St. Quentin, but Vigo had been at his side these twenty years.

"Vigo, say you! Vigo does not see street boys."

"I am no street boy," I cried angrily. "I know Vigo well. You shall smart for flouting me, when I have Monsieur's ear."

"Aye, when you have! Be off with you, rascal. I have no time to bother with you."

"Imbecile!" I sputtered. But he had turned his back on me and resumed his pacing up and down the court.

"Oh, very well for you, monsieur," I cried out loudly, hoping he could hear me. "But you will laugh t'other side of your mouth by and by. I'll pay you off."

It was maddening to be halted like this at the door of my goal; it made a fool of me. But while I debated whether to set up an outcry that would bring forward some officer with more sense than the surly sentry, or whether to seek some other entrance, I became aware of a sudden bustle in the courtyard, a narrow slice of which I could see through the gateway. A page dashed across; then a pair of flunkeys passed. There was some noise of voices and, finally, of hoofs and wheels. Half a dozen men-at-arms ran to the gates and swung them open, taking their stand on each side. Clearly, M. le Duc was about to drive out.

A little knot of people had quickly collected—sprung from between the stones of the pavement, it would seem—to see Monsieur emerge.

"He is a bold man," I heard one say, and a woman answer, "Aye, and a handsome," ere the heavy coach rolled out of the arch.

I pushed myself in close to the guardsmen, my heart thumping in my throat now that the moment had come when I should see my Monsieur. At the sight of his face I sprang bodily up on the coach-step, crying, all my soul in my voice, "Oh, Monsieur! M. le Duc!"

Monsieur looked at me coldly, blankly, without a hint of recognition. The next instant the young gentleman beside him sprang up-and struck me a blow that hurled me off the step. I fell where the ponderous wheels would have ended me had not a guardsman, quick and kind, pulled me out of the way. Some one shouted, "Assassin!"

"I am no assassin," I cried; "I only sought to speak with Monsieur."

"He deserves a hiding, the young cur," growled my foe, the sentry. "He's been pestering me this half-hour to let him in. He was one of Monsieur's men, he said. Monsieur would see him. Well, we have seen how Monsieur treats him!"

"Faith, no," said another. "We have only seen how our young gentleman treats him. Of course he is too proud and dainty to let a common man so much as look at him."

They all laughed; the young gentleman seemed no favourite.

"Parbleu! that was why I drew him from the wheels, because he knocked him there," said my preserver. "I don't believe there's harm in the boy. What meant you, lad?"

"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the street. This, then, was what I had come to Paris for—to be denied entrance to the house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and threatened with a drubbing from the lackeys!

For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From waking in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was Monsieur's. Never was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte more throw his soul into his service than I into mine. Never did lover hate to be parted from his mistress more than I from Monsieur. The journey to Paris had been a journey to Paradise. And now, this!

Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me beseech him and not answered—not lifted a finger to save me from being mangled under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were two very different places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had been pleased to take me into the château and treat me to more intimacy than he accorded to the high-born lads, his other pages. So much the easier, then, to cast me off when he had tired of me. My heart seethed with rage and bitterness against Monsieur, against the sentry, and, more than all, against the young Comte de Mar, who had flung me under the wheels.

I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son of M. le Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share his father's exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore him, which he so little repaid. I had never thought to like him, St. Quentin though he were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His handsome face looked ugly enough to me as he struck me that blow.

I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own thoughts louder than all the