St. Martin's Summer

Rafael Sabatini

Chapter 1 THE SENESCHAL OF DAUPHINY

My Lord of Tressan, His Majesty's Seneschal of Dauphiny, sat at his ease, his purple doublet all undone, to yield greater freedom to his vast bulk, a yellow silken undergarment visible through the gap, as is visible the flesh of some fruit that, swollen with over-ripeness, has burst its skin.

His wig - imposed upon him by necessity, not fashion lay on the table amid a confusion of dusty papers, and on his little fat nose, round and red as a cherry at its end, rested the bridge of his horn-rimmed spectacles. His bald head - so bald and shining that it conveyed an unpleasant sense of nakedness, suggesting that its uncovering had been an act of indelicacy on the owner's part - rested on the back of his great chair, and hid from sight the gaudy escutcheon wrought upon the crimson leather. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, and whether from that mouth or from his nose - or, perhaps, conflicting for issue between both - there came a snorting, rumbling sound to proclaim that my Lord the Seneschal was hard at work upon the King's business.

Yonder, at a meaner table, in an angle between two windows, a pale-faced thread-bare secretary was performing for a yearly pittance the duties for which my Lord the Seneschal was rewarded by emoluments disproportionately large.

The air of that vast apartment was disturbed by the sounds of Monsieur de Tressan's slumbers, the scratch and splutter of the secretary's pen, and the occasional hiss and crackle of the logs that burned in the great, cavern-like fireplace. Suddenly to these another sound was added. With a rasp and rattle the heavy curtains of blue velvet flecked with silver fleurs-de-lys were swept from the doorway, and the master of Monsieur de Tressan's household, in a well filled suit of black relieved by his heavy chain of office, stepped pompously forward.

The secretary dropped his pen, and shot a frightened glance at his slumbering master; then raised his hands above his head, and shook them wildly at the head lackey.

"Sh!" he whispered tragically. "Doucement, Monsieur Anselme."

Anselme paused. He appreciated the gravity of the situation. His bearing lost some of its dignity; his face underwent a change. Then with a recovery of some part of his erstwhile resolution:

"Nevertheless, he must be awakened," he announced, but in an undertone, as if afraid to do the thing he said must needs be done.

The horror in the secretary's eyes increased, but Anselme's reflected none of it. It was a grave thing, he knew by former experience, to arouse His Majesty's Seneschal of Dauphiny from his after-dinner nap; but it was an almost graver thing to fail in obedience to that black-eyed woman below who was demanding an audience.

Anselme realized that he was between the sword and the wall. He was, however, a man of a deliberate habit that was begotten of inherent indolence and nurtured among the good things that fell to his share as master of the Tressan household. Thoughtfully he caressed his tuft of red beard, puffed out his cheeks, and raised his eyes to the ceiling in appeal or denunciation to the heaven which he believed was somewhere beyond it.

"Nevertheless, he must be awakened," he repeated.

And then Fate came to his assistance. Somewhere in the house a door banged like a cannon-shot. Perspiration broke upon the secretary's brow. He sank limply back in his chair, giving himself up for lost. Anselme started and bit the knuckle of his forefinger in a manner suggesting an inarticulate imprecation.

My Lord the Seneschal moved. The noise of his slumbers culminated in a sudden, choking grunt, and abruptly ceased. His eyelids rolled slowly back, like an owl's, revealing pale blue eyes, which fixed themselves first upon the ceiling, then upon Anselme. Instantly he sat up, puffing and scowling, his hands shuffling his papers.

"A thousand devils! Anselme, why am I interrupted?" he grumbled querulously, still half-asleep. "What the plague do you want? Have you no thought for the King's affairs? Babylas" - this to his secretary - "did I not tell you that I had much to do; that I must not be disturbed?"

It was the great vanity of the life of this man, who did nothing, to appear the busiest fellow in all France, and no audience - not even that of his own lackeys - was too mean for him to take the stage to in that predilect role.

"Monsieur le Comte," said Anselme, in tones of abject self-effacement, "I had never dared intrude had the matter been of less urgency. But Madame the Dowager of Condillac is below. She begs to see Your Excellency instantly."

At once there was a change. Tressan became wide-awake upon the instant. His first act was to pass one hand over the wax-like surface of his bald head, whilst his other snatched at his wig. Then he heaved himself ponderously out of his great chair. He donned his wig, awry in his haste, and lurched forward towards Anselme, his fat fingers straining at his open doublet and drawing it together.

"Madame la Douairiere here?" he cried. "Make fast these buttons, rascal! Quick! Am I to receive a lady thus? Am I - ? Babylas," he snapped, interrupting himself and turning aside even as Anselme put forth hands to do his bidding. "A mirror, from my closet! Dispatch!"

The secretary was gone in a flash, and in a flash returned, even as Anselme completed his master's toilet. But clearly Monsieur de Tressan had awakened in a peevish humour, for no sooner were the buttons of his doublet secured than with his own fingers he tore them loose again, cursing his majordomo the while with vigour.

"You dog, Anselme, have you no sense of fitness, no discrimination? Am I to appear in this garment of the mode of a half-century ago before Madame la Marquise? Take it off; take it off, man! Get me the coat that came last month from Paris - the yellow one with the hanging sleeves and the gold buttons, and a sash - the crimson sash I had from Taillemant. Can you move no quicker, animal? Are you still here?"

Anselme, thus enjoined, lent an unwonted alacrity to his movements, waddling grotesquely like a hastening waterfowl. Between him and the secretary they dressed my Lord the Seneschal, and decked him out till he was fit to compare with a bird of paradise for gorgeousness of colouring if not for harmony of hues and elegance of outline.

Babylas held the mirror, and Anselme adjusted the Seneschal's wig, whilst Tressan himself twisted his black mustachios - how they kept their colour was a mystery to his acquaintance - and combed the tuft of beard that sprouted from one of his several chins.

He took a last look at his reflection, rehearsed a smile, and bade Anselme introduce his visitor. He desired his secretary to go to the devil, but, thinking better of it, he recalled him as he reached the door. His cherished vanity craved expression.

"Wait!" said he. "There is a letter must be written. The King's business may not suffer postponement - not for all the dowagers in France. Sit down."

Babylas obeyed him. Tressan stood with his back to the open door. His ears, strained to listen, had caught the swish of a woman's gown. He cleared his throat, and began to dictate:

"To Her Majesty the Queen-Regent - " He paused, and stood with knitted brows, deep in thought. Then he ponderously repeated - "To Her Majesty the Queen Regent - Have you got that?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Comte. 'To Her Majesty the Queen Regent.'"

There was a step, and a throat-clearing cough behind him.

"Monsieur de Tressan," said a woman's voice, a rich, melodious voice, if haughty and arrogant of intonation.

On the instant he turned, advanced a step, and bowed.

"Your humblest servant, madame," said he, his hand upon his heart. "This is an honour which - "

"Which necessity thrusts upon you," she broke in imperiously. "Dismiss that fellow."

The secretary, pale and shy, had risen. His eyes dilated at the woman's speech. He looked for a catastrophe as the natural result of her taking such a tone with this man who was the terror of his household and of all Grenoble. Instead, the Lord Seneschal's meekness left him breathless with surprise.

"He is my secretary, madame. We were at work as you came. I was on the point of inditing a letter to Her Majesty. The office of Seneschal in a province such as Dauphiny is helas! - no sinecure." He sighed like one whose brain is weary. "It leaves a man little time even to eat or sleep."

"You will be needing a holiday, then," said she, with cool insolence. "Take one for once, and let the King's business give place for half an hour to mine."

The secretary's horror grew by leaps and bounds.

Surely the storm would burst at last about this audacious woman's head. But the Lord Seneschal - usually so fiery and tempestuous - did no more than make her another of his absurd bows.

"You anticipate, madame, the very words I was about to utter. Babylas, vanish!" And he waved the scribbler doorwards with a contemptuous hand. "Take your papers with you - into my closet there. We will resume that letter to Her Majesty when madame shall have left me."

The secretary gathered up his papers, his quills, and his inkhorn, and went his way, accounting the end of the world at hand.

When the door had closed upon him, the Seneschal, with another bow and a simper, placed a chair at his visitor's disposal. She looked at the chair, then looked at the man much as she had looked at the chair, and turning her back contemptuously on both, she sauntered towards the fireplace. She stood before the blaze, with her whip tucked under her arm, drawing off her stout riding-gloves. She was a tall, splendidly proportioned woman, of a superb beauty of countenance, for all that she was well past the spring of life.

In the waning light of that October afternoon none would have guessed her age to be so much as thirty, though in the sunlight you might have set it at a little more. But in no light at all would you have guessed the truth, that her next would be her forty-second birthday. Her face was pale, of an ivory pallor that gleamed in sharp contrast with the ebony of her lustrous hair. Under the long lashes of low lids a pair of eyes black and insolent set off the haughty lines of her scarlet lips. Her nose was thin and straight, her neck an ivory pillar splendidly upright upon her handsome shoulders.

She was dressed for riding, in a gown of sapphire velvet, handsomely laced in gold across the stomacher, and surmounted at the neck, where it was cut low and square, by the starched band of fine linen which in France was already replacing the more elaborate ruff. On her head, over a linen coif, she wore a tall-crowned grey beaver, swathed with a scarf of blue and gold.

Standing by the hearth, one foot on the stone kerb, one elbow leaning lightly on the overmantel, she proceeded leisurely to remove her gloves.

The Seneschal observed her with eyes that held an odd mixture of furtiveness and admiration, his fingers - plump, indolent-looking stumps - plucking at his beard.

"Did you but know, Marquise, with what joy, with what a - "

"I will imagine it, whatever it may be," she broke in, with that brusque arrogance that marked her bearing. "The time for flowers of rhetoric is not now. There is trouble coming, man; trouble, dire trouble."

Up went the Seneschal's brows; his eyes grew wider.

"Trouble?" quoth he. And, having opened his mouth to give exit to that single word, open he left it.

She laughed lazily, her lip curling, her face twisting oddly, and mechanically she began to draw on again the glove she had drawn off.

"By your face I see how well you understand me," she sneered. "The trouble concerns Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye."

"From Paris - does it come from Court?" His voice was sunk.

She nodded. "You are a miracle of intuition today, Tressan."

He thrust his tiny tuft of beard between his teeth - a trick he had when perplexed or thoughtful. "Ah!" he exclaimed at last, and it sounded like an indrawn breath of apprehension. "Tell me more."

"What more is there to tell? You have the epitome of the story."

"But what is the nature of the trouble? What form does it take, and by whom are you advised of it?"

"A friend in Paris sent me word, and his messenger did his work well, else had Monsieur de Garnache been here before him, and I had not so much as had the mercy of this forewarning."

"Garnache?" quoth the Count. "Who is Garnache?"

"The emissary of the Queen-Regent. He has been dispatched hither by her to see that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye has justice and enlargement."

Tressan fell suddenly to groaning and wringing his hands a pathetic figure had it been less absurd.

"I warned you, madame! I warned you how it would end," he cried. "I told you - "

"Oh, I remember the things you told me," she cut in, scorn in her voice. "You may spare yourself their repetition. What is done is done, and I'll not - I would not - have it undone. Queen-Regent or no Queen-Regent, I am mistress at Condillac; my word is the only law we know, and I intend that so it shall continue."

Tressan looked at her in surprise. This unreasoning, feminine obstinacy so wrought upon him that he permitted himself a smile and a lapse into irony and banter.

"Parfaitement," said he, spreading his hands, and bowing. "Why speak of trouble, then?"

She beat her whip impatiently against her gown, her eyes staring into the fire. "Because, my attitude being such as it is, trouble will there be."

The Seneschal shrugged his shoulders, and moved a step towards her. He was cast down to think that he might have spared himself the trouble of donning his beautiful yellow doublet from Paris. She had eyes for no finery that afternoon. He was cast down, too, to think how things might go with him when this trouble came. It entered his thoughts that he had lain long on a bed of roses in this pleasant corner of Dauphiny, and he was smitten now with fear lest of the roses he should find nothing remaining but the thorns.

"How came the Queen-Regent to hear of - of mademoiselle's - ah - situation?" he inquired.

The Marquise swung round upon him in a passion.

"The girl found a dog of a traitor to bear a letter for her. That is enough. If ever chance or fate should bring him my way, by God! he shall hang without shrift."

Then she put her anger from her; put from her, too, the insolence and scorn with which so lavishly she had addressed him hitherto. Instead she assumed a suppliant air, her beautiful eyes meltingly set upon his face.

"Tressan," said she in her altered voice, "I am beset by enemies. But you will not forsake me? You will stand by me to the end - will you not, my friend? I can count upon you, at least?"

"In all things, madame," he answered, under the spell of her gaze. "What force does this man Garnache bring with him? Have you ascertained?"

"He brings none," she answered, triumph in her glance.

"None?" he echoed, horror in his. "None? Then - then - "

He tossed his arms to heaven, and stood a limp and shaken thing. She leaned forward, and regarded him stricken in surprise.

"Diable! What ails you?" she snapped. "Could I have given you better news?"

"If you could have given me worse, I cannot think what it might have been," he groaned. Then, as if smitten by a sudden notion that flashed a gleam of hope into this terrifying darkness that was settling down upon him, he suddenly looked up. "You mean to resist him?" he inquired.

She stared at him a second, then laughed, a thought unpleasantly.

"Pish! But you are mad," she scorned him. "Do you need ask if I intend to resist - I, with the strongest castle in Dauphiny? By God! sir, if you need to hear me say it, hear me then say that I shall resist him and as many as the Queen may send after him, for as long as one stone of Condillac shall stand upon another."

The Seneschal blew out his lips, and fell once more to the chewing of his beard.

"What did you mean when you said I could have given you no worse news than that of his coming alone?" she questioned suddenly.

"Madame," said he, "if this man comes without force, and you resist the orders of which he is the bearer, what think you will betide?"

"He will appeal to you for the men he needs that he may batter down my walls," she answered calmly.

He looked at her incredulously. "You realize it?" he ejaculated. "You realize it?"

"What is there in it that should puzzle a babe?"

Her callousness was like a gust of wind upon the living embers of his fears. It blew them into a blaze of wrath, sudden and terrific as that of such a man at bay could be. He advanced upon her with the rolling gait of the obese, his cheeks purple, his arms waving wildly, his dyed mustachios bristling.

"And what of me, madame?" he spluttered. "What of me? Am I to be ruined, gaoled, and hanged, maybe, for refusing him men? - for that is what is in your mind. Am I to make myself an outlaw? Am I, who have been Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny these fifteen years, to end my days in degradation in the cause of a woman's matrimonial projects for a simpering school-girl? Seigneur du Ciel!" he roared, "I think you are gone mad - mad, mad! over this affair. You would not think it too much to set the whole province in flames so that you could have your way with this wretched child. But, Ventregris! to ruin me - to - to - "

He fell silent for very want of words; just gaped and gasped, and then, with hands folded upon his paunch, he set himself to pace the chamber.

Madame de Condillac stood watching him, her face composed, her glance cold. She was like some stalwart oak, weathering with unshaken front a hurricane. When he had done, she moved away from the fireplace, and, beating her side gently with her whip, she stepped to the door.

"Au revoir, Monsieur de Tressan," said she, mighty cool, her back towards him.

At that he halted in his feverish stride, stood still and threw up his head. His anger went out, as a candle is extinguished by a puff of wind. And in its place a new fear crept into his heart.

"Madame, madame!" he cried. "Wait! Hear me."

She paused, half-turned, and looked at him over her shoulder, scorn in her glance, a sneer on her scarlet mouth, insolence in every line of her.

"I think, monsieur, that I have heard a little more than enough," said she. "I am assured, at least, that in you I have but a fair-weather friend, a poor lipserver."

"Ah, not that, madame," he cried, and his voice was stricken. "Say not that. I would serve you as would none other in all this world - you know it, Marquise; you know it."

She faced about, and confronted him, her smile a trifle broader, as if amusement were now blending with her scorn.

"It is easy to protest. Easy to say, 'I will die for you,' so long as the need for such a sacrifice be remote. But let me do no more than ask a favour, and it is, 'What of my good name, madame? What of my seneschalship? Am I to be gaoled or hanged to pleasure you?' Faugh!" she ended, with a toss of her splendid head. "The world is peopled with your kind, and I - alas! for a woman's intuitions - had held you different from the rest."

Her words were to his soul as a sword of fire might have been to his flesh. They scorched and shrivelled it. He saw himself as she would have him see himself - a mean, contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she - dear God! - had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion in his feelings.

"Marquise," he cried, "you say no more than what is just. But punish me no further. I meant not what I said. I was beside myself. Let me atone - let my future actions make amends for that odious departure from my true self."

There was no scorn now in her smile; only an ineffable tenderness, beholding which he felt it in his heart to hang if need be that he might continue high in her regard. He sprang forward, and took the hand she extended to him.

"I knew, Tressan," said she, "that you were not yourself, and that when you bethought you of what you had said, my valiant, faithful friend would not desert me."

He stooped over her hand, and slobbered kisses upon her unresponsive glove.

"Madame," said he, "you may count upon me. This fellow out of Paris shall have no men from me, depend upon it."

She caught him by the shoulders, and held him so, before her. Her face was radiant, alluring; and her eyes dwelt on his with a kindness he had never seen there save in some wild daydream of his.

"I will not refuse a service you offer me so gallantly," said she. "It were an ill thing to wound you by so refusing it."

"Marquise," he cried, "it is as nothing to what I would do did the occasion serve. But when this thing 'tis done; when you have had your way with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, and the nuptials shall have been celebrated, then - dare I hope - ?"

He said no more in words, but his little blue eyes had an eloquence that left nothing to mere speech.

Their glances met, she holding him always at arm's length by that grip upon his shoulders, a grip that was firm and nervous.

In the Seneschal of Dauphiny, as she now gazed upon him, she beheld a very toad of a man, and the soul of her shuddered at the sight of him combining with the thing that he suggested. But her glance was steady and her lips maintained their smile, just as if that ugliness of his had been invested with some abstract beauty existing only to her gaze; a little colour crept into her cheeks, and red being the colour of love's livery, Tressan misread its meaning.

She nodded to him across the little distance of her outstretched arms, then smothered a laugh that drove him crazed with hope, and breaking from him she sped swiftly, shyly it almost seemed to him, to the door.

There she paused a moment looking back at him with a coyness that might have become a girl of half her years, yet which her splendid beauty saved from being unbecoming even in her.

One adorable smile she gave him, and before he could advance to hold the door for her, she had opened it and passed out.

Chapter 2 MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE

To promise rashly, particularly where a woman is the suppliant, and afterwards, if not positively to repent the promise, at least to regret that one did not hedge it with a few conditions, is a proceeding not uncommon to youth. In a man of advanced age, such as Monsieur de Tressan, it never should have place; and, indeed, it seldom has, unless that man has come again under the sway of the influences by which youth, for good or ill, is governed.

Whilst the flush of his adoration was upon him, hot from the contact of her presence, he knew no repentance, found room in his mind for no regrets. He crossed to the window, and pressed his huge round face to the pane, in a futile effort to watch her mount and ride out of the courtyard with her little troop of attendants. Finding that he might not - the window being placed too high - gratify his wishes in that connection, he dropped into his chair, and sat in the fast-deepening gloom, reviewing, fondly here, hurriedly there, the interview that had but ended.

Thus night fell, and darkness settled down about him, relieved only by the red glow of the logs smouldering on the hearth. In the gloom inspiration visited him. He called for lights and Babylas. Both came, and he dispatched the lackey that lighted the tapers to summon Monsieur d'Aubran, the commander of the garrison of Grenoble.

In the interval before the soldier's coming he conferred with Babylas concerning what he had in mind, but he found his secretary singularly dull and unimaginative. So that, perforce, he must fall back upon himself. He sat glum and thoughtful, his mind in unproductive travail, until the captain was announced.

Still without any definite plan, he blundered headlong, nevertheless, into the necessary first step towards the fulfilment of his purpose.

"Captain," said he, looking mighty grave, "I have cause to believe that all is not as it should be in the hills in the district of Montelimar."

"Is there trouble, monsieur?" inquired the captain, startled.

"Maybe there is, maybe there is not," returned the Seneschal mysteriously. "You shall have your full orders in the morning. Meanwhile, make ready to repair to the neighbourhood of Montelimar to-morrow with a couple of hundred men."

"A couple of hundred, monsieur!" exclaimed d'Aubran. "But that will be to empty Grenoble of soldiers."

"What of it? We are not likely to require them here. Let your orders for preparation go round tonight, so that your knaves may be ready to set out betimes to-morrow. If you will be so good as to wait upon me early you shall have your instructions."

Mystified, Monsieur d'Aubran departed on his errand, and my Lord Seneschal went down to supper well pleased with the cunning device by which he was to leave Grenoble without a garrison. It was an astute way of escape from the awkward situation into which his attachment to the interests of the dowager of Condillac was likely to place him.

But when the morning came he was less pleased with the idea, chiefly because he had been unable to invent any details that should lend it the necessary colour, and d'Aubran - worse luck - was an intelligent officer who might evince a pardonable but embarrassing curiosity. A leader of soldiers has a right to know something at least of the enterprise upon which he leads them. By morning, too, Tressan found that the intervening space of the night, since he had seen Madame de Condillac, had cooled his ardour very considerably.

He had reached the incipient stages of regret of his rash promise.

When Captain d'Aubran was announced to him, he bade them ask him to come again in an hour's time. From mere regrets he was passing now, through dismay, into utter repentance of his promise. He sat in his study, at his littered writing-table, his head in his hands, a confusion of thoughts, a wild, frenzied striving after invention in his brain.

Thus Anselme found him when he thrust aside the portiere to announce that a Monsieur de Garnache, from Paris, was below, demanding to see the Lord Seneschal at once upon an affair of State.

Tressan's flesh trembled and his heart fainted. Then, suddenly, desperately, he took his courage in both hands. He remembered who he was and what he was the King's Lord Seneschal of the Province of Dauphiny. Throughout that province, from the Rhone to the Alps, his word was law, his name a terror to evildoers - and to some others besides. Was he to blench and tremble at the mention of the name of a Court lackey out of Paris, who brought him a message from the Queen-Regent? Body of God! not he.

He heaved himself to his feet, warmed and heartened by the thought; his eye sparkled, and there was a deeper flush than usual upon his cheek.

"Admit this Monsieur de Garnache," said he with a fine loftiness, and in his heart he pondered what he would say and how he should say it; how he should stand, how move, and how look. His roving eye caught sight of his secretary. He remembered something - the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep in business. Sharply he uttered his secretary's name.

Babylas raised his pale face; he knew what was coming; it had come so many times before. But there was no vestige of a smile on his drooping lips, no gleam of amusement in his patient eye. He thrust aside the papers on which he was at work, and drew towards him a fresh sheet on which to pen the letter which, he knew by experience, Tressan was about to indite to the Queen-mother. For these purposes Her Majesty was Tressan's only correspondent.

Then the door opened, the portiere was swept aside, and Anselme announced "Monsieur de Garnache."

Tressan turned as the newcomer stepped briskly into the room, and bowed, hat in hand, its long crimson feather sweeping the ground, then straightened himself and permitted the Seneschal to take his measure.

Tressan beheld a man of a good height, broad to the waist and spare thence to the ground, who at first glance appeared to be mainly clad in leather. A buff jerkin fitted his body; below it there was a glimpse of wine-coloured trunks, and hose of a slightly deeper hue, which vanished immediately into a pair of huge thighboots of untanned leather. A leather swordbelt, gold-embroidered at the edges, carried a long steel-halted rapier in a leather scabbard chaped with steel. The sleeves of his doublet which protruded from his leather casing were of the same colour and material as his trunks. In one hand he carried his broad black hat with its crimson feather, in the other a little roll of parchment; and when he moved the creak of leather and jingle of his spurs made pleasant music for a martial spirit.

Above all, this man's head, well set upon his shoulders, claimed some attention. His nose was hooked and rather large, his eyes were blue, bright as steel, and set a trifle wide. Above a thin-lapped, delicate mouth his reddish mustachios, slightly streaked with grey, stood out, bristling like a cat's. His hair was darker - almost brown save at the temples, where age had faded it to an ashen colour. In general his aspect was one of rugged strength.

The Seneschal, measuring him with an adversary's eye, misliked his looks. But he bowed urbanely, washing his hands in the air, and murmuring:

"Your servant, Monsieur de - ?"

"Garnache," came the other's crisp, metallic voice, and the name had a sound as of an oath on his lips. "Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache. I come to you on an errand of Her Majesty's, as this my warrant will apprise you." And he proffered the paper he held, which Tressan accepted from his hand.

A change was visible in the wily Seneschal's fat countenance. Its round expanse had expressed interrogation until now; but at the Parisian's announcement that he was an emissary of the Queen's, Tressan insinuated into it just that look of surprise and of increased deference which would have been natural had he not already been forewarned of Monsieur de Garnache's mission and identity.

He placed a chair at his visitor's disposal, himself resuming his seat at his writing-table, and unfolding the paper Garnache had given him. The newcomer seated himself, hitched his sword-belt round so that he could lean both hands upon the hilt, and sat, stiff and immovable, awaiting the Lord Seneschal's pleasure. From his desk across the room the secretary, idly chewing the feathered end of his goose-quill, took silent stock of the man from Paris, and wondered.

Tressan folded the paper carefully, and returned it to its owner. It was no more than a formal credential, setting forth that Garnache was travelling into Dauphiny on a State affair, and commanding Monsieur de Tressan to give him every assistance he might require in the performance of his errand.

"Parfaitement," purred the Lord Seneschal. "And now, monsieur, if you will communicate to me the nature of your affair, you shall find me entirely at your service."

"It goes without saying that you are acquainted with the Chateau de Condillac?" began Garnache, plunging straight into business.

"Perfectly." The Seneschal leaned back, and was concerned to feel his pulses throbbing a shade too quickly. But he controlled his features, and maintained a placid, bland expression.

"You are perhaps acquainted with its inhabitants?"

"Yes."

"Intimate with them?"

The Seneschal pursed his lips, arched his brows, and slowly waved his podgy hands, a combination of grimace and gesture that said much or nothing. But reflecting that Monsieur de Tressan had a tongue, Garnache apparently did not opine it worth his while to set a strain upon his own imagination, for -

"Intimate with them?" he repeated, and this time there was a sharper note in his voice.

Tressan leaned forward and brought his finger-tips together. His voice was as urbane as it lay within its power to be.

"I understood that monsieur was proposing to state his business, not to question mine."

Garnache sat back in his chair, and his eyes narrowed. He scented opposition, and the greatest stumbling-block in Garnache's career had been that he could never learn to brook opposition from any man. That characteristic, evinced early in life, had all but been the ruin of him. He was a man of high intellectual gifts, of military skill and great resource; out of consideration for which had he been chosen by Marie de Medicis to come upon this errand. But he marred it all by a temper so ungovernable that in Paris there was current a byword, "Explosive as Garnache."

Little did Tressan dream to what a cask of gunpowder he was applying the match of his smug pertness. Nor did Garnache let him dream it just yet. He controlled himself betimes, bethinking him that, after all, there might be some reason in what this fat fellow said.

"You misapprehend my purpose, sir," said he, his lean brown hand stroking his long chin. "I but sought to learn how far already you may be informed of what is taking place up there, to the end that I may spare myself the pains of citing facts with which already you are acquainted. Still, monsieur, I am willing to proceed upon the lines which would appear to be more agreeable to yourself.

"This, then, is the sum of the affair that brings me: The late Marquis de Condillac left two sons. The elder, Florimond - who is the present marquis, and who has been and still continues absent, warring in Italy, since before his father's death - is the stepson of the present Dowager, she being the mother of the younger son, Marius de Condillac.

"Should you observe me to be anywhere at error, I beg, monsieur, that you will have the complaisance to correct me."

The Seneschal bowed gravely, and Monsieur de Garnache continued:

"Now this younger son - I believe that he is in his twenty-first year at present - has been something of a scapegrace."

"A scapegrace? Bon Dieu, no. That is a harsh name to give him. A little indiscreet at times, a little rash, as is the way of youth."

He would have said more, but the man from Paris was of no mind to waste time on quibbles.

"Very well," he snapped, cutting in. "We will say, a little indiscreet. My errand is not concerned with Monsieur Marius's morals or with his lack of them. These indiscretions which you belittle appear to have been enough to have estranged him from his father, a circumstance which but served the more to endear him to his mother. I am told that she is a very handsome woman, and that the boy favours her surprisingly."

"Ah!" sighed the Seneschal in a rapture. "A beautiful woman - a noble, splendid woman.'

"Hum!" Garnache observed the ecstatic simper with a grim eye. Then he proceeded with his story.

"The late marquis possessed in his neighbour, the also deceased Monsieur de La Vauvraye, a very dear and valued friend. Monsieur de La Vauvraye had an only child, a daughter, to inherit his very considerable estates probably the wealthiest in all Dauphiny, so I am informed. It was the dearest wish of his heart to transform what had been a lifelong friendship in his own generation into a closer relationship in the next - a wish that found a very ready echo in the heart of Monsieur de Condillac. Florimond de Condillac was sixteen years of age at the time, and Valerie de La Vauvraye fourteen. For all their tender years, they were betrothed, and they grew up to love each other and to look forward to the consummation of the plans their fathers had laid for them."

"Monsieur, monsieur," the Seneschal protested, "how can you possibly infer so much? How can you say that they loved each other? What authority can you have for pretending to know what was in their inmost hearts?"

"The authority of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye," was the unanswerable rejoinder. "I am telling you, more or less, what she herself wrote to the Queen."

"Ah! Well, well - proceed, monsieur."

"This marriage should render Florimond de Condillac the wealthiest and most powerful gentleman in Dauphiny - one of the wealthiest in France; and the idea of it pleased the old marquis, inasmuch as the disparity there would be between the worldly possessions of his two sons would serve to mark his disapproval of the younger. But before settling down, Florimond signified a desire to see the world, as was fit and proper and becoming in a young man who was later to assume such wide responsibilities. His father, realizing the wisdom of such a step, made but slight objection, and at the age of twenty Florimond set out for the Italian wars. Two years afterwards, a little over six months ago, his father died, and was followed to the grave some weeks later by Monsieur de La Vauvraye. The latter, with a want of foresight which has given rise to the present trouble, misjudging the character of the Dowager of Condillac, entrusted to her care his daughter Valerie pending Florimond's return, when the nuptials would naturally be immediately celebrated. I am probably telling you no more than you already know. But you owe the infliction to your own unwillingness to answer my questions."

"No, no, monsieur; I assure you that in what you say there is much that is entirely new to me."

"I rejoice to hear it, Monsieur de Tressan," said Garnache very seriously, "for had you been in possession of all these facts, Her Majesty might have a right to learn how it chanced that you had nowise interfered in what is toward at Condillac.

"But to proceed: Madame de Condillac and her precious Benjamin - this Marius - finding themselves, in Florimond's absence, masters of the situation, have set about turning it to their own best advantage. Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, whilst being nominally under their guardianship, finds herself practically gaoled by them, and odious plans are set before her to marry Marius. Could the Dowager but accomplish this, it would seem that she would not only be assuring a future of ease and dignity for her son, but also be giving vent to all her pent-up hatred of her stepson.

"Mademoiselle, however, withstands them, and in this she is aided by a fortuitous circumstance which has arisen out of the overbearing arrogance that appears to be madame's chief characteristic. Condillac after the marquis's death had refused to pay tithes to Mother Church and has flouted and insulted the Bishop. This prelate, after finding remonstrance vain, has retorted by placing Condillac under an Interdict, depriving all within it of the benefit of clergy. Thus, they have been unable to find a priest to venture thither, so that even had they willed to marry mademoiselle by force to Marius, they lacked the actual means of doing so.

"Florimond continues absent. We have every reason to believe that he has been left in ignorance of his father's death. Letters coming from him from time to time prove that he was alive and well at least until three months ago. A messenger has been dispatched to find him and urge him to return home at once. But pending his arrival the Queen has determined to take the necessary steps to ensure that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye shall be released from her captivity, that she shall suffer no further molestation at the hands of Madame de Condillac and her son - enfin, that she shall run no further risks.

"My errand, monsieur, is to acquaint you with these facts, and to request you to proceed to Condillac and deliver thence Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, whom I am subsequently to escort to Paris and place under Her Majesty's protection until such time as the new marquis shall return to claim her."

Having concluded, Monsieur de Garnache sat back in his chair, and threw one leg over the other, fixing his eyes upon the Seneschal's face and awaiting his reply.

On that gross countenance before him he saw fall the shadow of perplexity. Tressan was monstrous ill-at-ease, and his face lost a good deal of its habitual plethora of colour. He sought to temporize.

"Does it not occur to you, monsieur, that perhaps too much importance may have been attached to the word of this child - this Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye?"

"Does it occur to you that such has been the case, that she has overstated it?" counter-questioned Monsieur de Garnache.

"No, no. I do not say that. But - but - would it not be better - more - ah - satisfactory to all concerned, if you yourself were to go to Condillac, and deliver your message in person, demanding mademoiselle?"

The man from Paris looked at him a moment, then stood up suddenly, and shifted the carriages of his sword back to their normal position. His brows came together in a frown, from which the Seneschal argued that his suggestion was not well received.

"Monsieur," said the Parisian very coldly, like a man who contains a rising anger, "let me tell you that this is the first time in my life that I have been concerned in anything that had to do with women and I am close upon forty years of age. The task, I can assure you, was little to my taste. I embarked upon it because, being a soldier and having received my orders, I was in the unfortunate position of being unable to help myself. But I intend, monsieur, to adhere rigidly to the letter of these commands. Already I have endured more than enough in the interests of this damsel. I have ridden from Paris, and that means close upon a week in the saddle - no little thing to a man who has acquired certain habits of life and developed a taste for certain minor comforts which he is very reluctant to forgo. I have fed and slept at inns, living on the worst of fares and sleeping on the hardest, and hardly the cleanest, of beds. Ventregris! Figure to yourself that last night we lay at Luzan, in the only inn the place contained - a hovel, Monsieur le Seneschal, a hovel in which I would not kennel a dog I loved."

His face flushed, and his voice rose as he dwelt upon the things he had undergone.

"My servant and I slept in a dormitory'- a thousand devils! monsieur, in a dormitory! Do you realize it? We had for company a drunken vintner, a pedlar, a pilgrim on his way to Rome, and two peasant women; and they sent us to bed without candles, for modesty's sake. I ask you to conceive my feelings in such a case as that. I could tell you more; but that as a sample of what I have undergone could scarcely be surpassed."

"Truly-truly outrageous," sympathized the Seneschal; yet he grinned.

"I ask you -have I not suffered inconvenience enough already in the service of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye that you can blame me if I refuse to go a single step further than my orders bid me?"

The Seneschal stared at him now in increasing dismay. Had his own interests been less at issue he could have indulged his mirth at the other's fiery indignation at the inconveniences he recited. As it was, he had nothing to say; no thought or feeling other than what concerned finding a way of escape from the net that seemed to be closing in about him - how to seem to serve the Queen without turning against the Dowager of Condillac; how to seem to serve the Dowager without opposing the wishes of the Queen.

"A plague on the girl!" he growled, unconsciously uttering his thoughts aloud. "The devil take her!"

Garnache smiled grimly. "That is a bond of sympathy between us," said he. "I have said those very words a hundred times - a thousand times, indeed - between Paris and Grenoble. Yet I scarcely see that you can damn her with as much justice as can I.

"But there, monsieur; all this is unprofitable. You have my message. I shall spend the day at Grenoble, and take a well-earned rest. By this time to-morrow I shall be ready to start upon my return journey. I shall have then the honour to wait upon you again, to the end that I may receive from you the charge of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. I shall count upon your having her here, in readiness to set out with me, by noon to-morrow."

He bowed, with a flourish of his plumed hat, and would with that have taken his departure but that the Seneschal stayed him.

"Monsieur, monsieur," he cried, in piteous affright, "you do not know the Dowager of Condillac."

"Why, no. What of it?"

"What of it? Did you know her, you would understand that she is not the woman to be driven. I may order her in the Queen's name to deliver up Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. But she will withstand me."

"Withstand you?" echoed Garnache, frowning into the face of this fat man, who had risen also, brought to his feet by excitement. "Withstand you - you, the Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny? You are amusing yourself at my expense."

"But I tell you that she will," the other insisted in a passion. "You may look for the girl in vain tomorrow unless you go to Condillac yourself and take her."

Garnache drew himself up and delivered his answer in a tone that was final.

"You are the governor of the province, monsieur, and in this matter you have in addition the Queen's particular authority - nay, her commands are imposed upon you. Those commands, as interpreted by me, you will execute in the manner I have indicated."

The Seneschal shrugged his shoulders, and chewed a second at his beard.

"It is an easy thing for you to tell me what to do. Tell me, rather, how to do it, how to overcome her opposition."

"You are very sure of opposition - strangely sure, monsieur," said Garnache, looking him between the eyes. "In any case, you have soldiers."

"And so has she, and the strongest castle in southern France - to say nothing of the most cursed obstinacy in the world. What she says, she does."

"And what the Queen says her loyal servants do," was Garnache's rejoinder, in a withering tone. "I think there is nothing more to be said, monsieur," he added. "By this time to-morrow I shall expect to receive from you, here, the charge of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. A demain, donc, Monsieur le Seneschal."

And with another bow the man from Paris drew himself erect, turned on his heel, and went jingling and creaking from the room.

The Lord Seneschal sank back in his chair, and wondered to himself whether to die might not prove an easy way out of the horrid situation into which chance and his ill-starred tenderness for the Dowager of Condillac had thrust him.

At his desk sat his secretary, who had been a witness of the interview, lost in wonder almost as great as the Seneschal's own.

For an hour Tressan remained where he was, deep in thought and gnawing at his beard. Then with a sudden burst of passion, expressed in a round oath or two, he rose, and called for his horse that he might ride to Condillac.

Chapter 3 THE DOWAGER'S COMPLIANCE

Promptly at noon on the morrow Monsieur de Garnache presented himself once more at the Seneschal's palace, and with him went Rabecque, his body-servant, a lean, swarthy, sharp-faced man, a trifle younger than his master.

Anselme, the obese master of the household, received them with profound respect, and at once conducted Garnache to Monsieur de Tressan's presence.

On the stairs they met Captain d'Aubran, who was descending. The captain was not in the best of humours. For four-and-twenty hours he had kept two hundred of his men under arms, ready to march as soon as he should receive his orders from the Lord Seneschal, yet those instructions were not forthcoming. He had been to seek them again that morning, only to be again put off.

Monsieur de Garnache had considerable doubt, born of his yesterday's interview with the Seneschal, that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye would be delivered into his charge as he had stipulated. His relief was, therefore, considerable, upon being ushered into Tressan's presence, to find a lady in cloak and hat, dressed as for a journey, seated in a chair by the great fireplace.

Tressan advanced to meet him, a smile of cordial welcome on his lips, and they bowed to each other in formal greeting.

"You see, monsieur," said the Seneschal, waving a plump hand in the direction of the lady, "that you have been obeyed. Here is your charge."

Then to the lady: "This is Monsieur de Garnache," he announced, "of whom I have already told you, who is to conduct you to Paris by order of Her Majesty.

"And now, my good friends, however great the pleasure I derive from your company, I care not how soon you set out, for I have some prodigious arrears of work upon my hands."

Garnache bowed to the lady, who returned his greeting by an inclination of the head, and his keen eyes played briskly over her. She was a plump-faced, insipid child, with fair hair and pale blue eyes, stolid and bovine in their expressionlessness.

"I am quite ready, monsieur," said she, rising as she spoke, and gathering her cloak about her; and Garnache remarked that her voice had the southern drawl, her words the faintest suggestion of a patois. It was amazing how a lady born and bred could degenerate in the rusticity of Dauphiny. Pigs and cows, he made no doubt, had been her chief objectives. Yet, even so, he thought he might have expected that she would have had more to say to him than just those five words expressing her readiness to depart. He had looked for some acknowledgment of satisfaction at his presence, some utterances of gratitude either to himself or to the Queen-Regent for the promptness with which she had been succoured. He was disappointed, but he showed nothing of it, as with a simple inclination of the head -

"Good!" said he. "Since you are ready and Monsieur le Seneschal is anxious to be rid of us, let us by all means be moving. You have a long and tedious journey before you, mademoiselle."

"I - I am prepared for that," she faltered.

He stood aside, and bending from the waist he made a sweeping gesture towards the door with the hand that held his hat. To the invitation to precede him she readily responded, and, with a bow to the Seneschal, she began to walk across the apartment.

Garnache's eyes, narrowing slightly, followed her, like points of steel. Suddenly he shot a disturbing glance at Tressan's face, and the corner of his wild-cat mustachios twitched. He stood erect, and called her very sharply.

"Mademoiselle!"

She stopped, and turned to face him, an incredible shyness seeming to cause her to avoid his gaze.

"You have, no doubt, Monsieur le Seneschal's word for my identity. But I think it is as well that you should satisfy yourself. Before placing yourself entirely in my care, as you are about to do, you would be well advised to assure yourself, that I am indeed Her Majesty's emissary. Will you be good enough to glance at this?"

He drew forth as he spoke the letter in the queen's own hand, turned it upside down, and so presented it to her. The Seneschal looked on stolidly, a few paces distant.

"But certainly, mademoiselle, assure yourself that this gentleman is no other than I have told you."

Thus enjoined, she took the letter; for a second her eyes met Garnache's glittering gaze, and she shivered. Then she bent her glance to the writing, and studied it a moment, what time the man from Paris watched her closely.

Presently she handed it back to him.

"Thank you, monsieur," was all she said.

"You are satisfied that it is in order, mademoiselle?" he inquired, and a note of mockery too subtle for her or the Seneschal ran through his question.

"I am quite satisfied."

Garnache turned to Tressan. His eyes were smiling, but unpleasantly, and in his voice when he spoke there was something akin to the distant rumble that heralds an approaching storm.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "has received an eccentric education."

"Eh?" quoth Tressan, perplexed.

"I have heard tell, monsieur, of a people somewhere in the East who read and write from right to left; but never yet have I heard tell of any - particularly in France - so oddly schooled as to do their reading upside down."

Tressan caught the drift of the other's meaning. He paled a little, and sucked his lip, his eyes wandering to the girl, who stood in stolid inapprehension of what was being said.

"Did she do that?" said he, and he scarcely knew what he was saying; all that he realized was that it urged him to explain this thing. "Mademoiselle's education has been neglected - a by no means uncommon happening in these parts. She is sensitive of it; she seeks to hide the fact."

Then the storm broke about their heads. And it crashed and thundered awfully in the next few minutes.

"O liar! O damned, audacious liar," roared Garnache uncompromisingly, advancing a step upon the Seneschal, and shaking the parchment threateningly in his very face, as though it were become a weapon of offence. "Was it to hide the fact that she had not been taught to write that she sent the Queen a letter pages-long? Who is this woman?" And the finger he pointed at the girl quivered with the rage that filled him at this trick they had thought to put upon him.

Tressan sought refuge in offended dignity. He drew himself up, threw back his head, and looked the Parisian fiercely in the eye.

"Since you take this tone with me, monsieur -"

"I take with you - as with any man - the tone that to me seems best. You miserable fool! As sure as you're a rogue this affair shall cost you your position. You have waxed fat and sleek in your seneschalship; this easy life in Dauphiny appears to have been well suited to your health. But as your paunch has grown, so, of a truth, have your brains dwindled, else had you never thought to cheat me quite so easily.

"Am I some lout who has spent his days herding swine, think you, that you could trick me into believing this creature to be Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye - this creature with the mien of a peasant, with a breath reeking of garlic like a third-rate eating-house, and the walk of a woman who has never known footgear until this moment? Tell me, sir, for what manner of fool did you take me?"

The Seneschal stood with blanched face and gaping mouth, his fire all turned to ashes before the passion of this gaunt man.

Garnache paid no heed to him. He stepped to the girl, and roughly raised her chin with his hand so that she was forced to look him in the face.

"What is your name, wench?" he asked her.

"Margot," she blubbered, bursting into tears.

He dropped her chin, and turned away with a gesture of disgust.

"Get you gone," he bade her harshly. "Get you back to the kitchen or the onion-field from which they took you."

And the girl, scarce believing her good fortune, departed with a speed that bordered on the ludicrous. Tressan had naught to say, no word to stay her with; pretence, he realized, was vain.

"Now, my Lord Seneschal," quoth Garnache, arms akimbo, feet planted wide, and eyes upon the wretched man's countenance, "what may you have to say to me?"

Tressan shifted his position; he avoided the other's glance; he was visibly trembling, and when presently he spoke it was in faltering accents.

"It - it - seems, monsieur, that - ah - that I have been the victim of some imposture."

"It had rather seemed to me that the victim chosen was myself."

"Clearly we were both victims," the Seneschal rejoined. Then he proceeded to explain. "I went to Condillac yesterday as you desired me, and after a stormy interview with the Marquise I obtained from her - as I believed - the person of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. You see I was not myself acquainted with the lady."

Garnache looked at him. He did not believe him. He regretted almost that he had not further questioned the girl. But, after all, perhaps it might be easier and more expedient if he were to appear to accept the Seneschal's statement. But he must provide against further fraud.

"Monsieur le Seneschal," said he in calmer tones, putting his anger from him, "at the best you are a blunderer and an ass, at the worst a traitor. I will inquire no further at present; I'll not seek to discriminate too finely."

"Monsieur, these insults - " began the Seneschal, summoning dignity to his aid. But Garnache broke in:

"La, la! I speak in the Queen's name. If you have thought to aid the Dowager of Condillac in this resistance of Her Majesty's mandate, let me enjoin you, as you value your seneschalship - as you value your very neck - to harbour that thought no longer.

"It seems that, after all, I must deal myself with the situation. I must go myself to Condillac. If they should resist me, I shall look to you for the necessary means to overcome that resistance.

"And bear you this in mind: I have chosen to leave it an open question whether you were a party to the trick it has been sought to put upon the Queen, through me, her representative. But it is a question that I have it in my power to resolve at any moment - to resolve as I choose. Unless, monsieur, I find you hereafter - as I trust - actuated by the most unswerving loyalty, I shall resolve that question by proclaiming you a traitor; and as a traitor I shall arrest you and carry you to Paris. Monsieur le Seneschal, I have the honour to give you good-day!"

When he was gone, Monsieur de Tressan flung off his wig, and mopped the perspiration from his brow. He went white as snow and red as fire by turns, as he paced the apartment in a frenzy. Never in the fifteen years that were sped since he had been raised to the governorship of the province had any man taken such a tone with him and harangued him in such terms.

A liar and a traitor had he been called that morning, a knave and a fool; he had been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose. Dame! What manner of cur was he become? And the man who had done all this - a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and the barrack-room still lived!

Bloodshed was in his mind; murder beckoned him alluringly to take her as his ally. But he put the thought from him, frenzied though he might be. He must fight this knave with other weapons; frustrate his mission, and send him back to Paris and the Queen's scorn, beaten and empty-handed.

"Babylas's!" he shouted.

Immediately the secretary appeared.

"Have you given thought to the matter of Captain d'Aubran?" he asked, his voice an impatient snarl.

"Yes, monsieur, I have pondered it all morning."

"Well? And what have you concluded?"

"Helas! monsieur, nothing."

Tressan smote the table before him a blow that shook some of the dust out of the papers that cumbered it. "Ventregris! How am I served? For what do I pay you, and feed you, and house you, good-for-naught, if you are to fail me whenever I need the things you call your brains? Have you no intelligence, no thought, no imagination? Can you invent no plausible business, no likely rising, no possible disturbances that shall justify my sending Aubran and his men to Montelimar - to the very devil, if need be."

The secretary trembled in his every limb; his eyes shunned his master's as his master's had shunned Garnache's awhile ago. The Seneschal was enjoying himself. If he had been bullied and browbeaten, here, at least, was one upon whom he, in his turn, might taste the joys of bullying and browbeating.

"You lazy, miserable calf," he stormed, "I might be better served by a wooden image. Go! It seems I must rely upon myself. It is always so. Wait!" he thundered; for the secretary, only too glad to obey his last order, had already reached the door. "Tell Anselme to bid the Captain attend me here at once."

Babylas's bowed and went his errand.

A certain amount of his ill-humour vented, Tressan made an effort to regain his self-control. He passed his handkerchief for the last time over face and head, and resumed his wig.

When d'Aubran entered, the Seneschal was composed and in his wonted habit of ponderous dignity. "Ah, d'Aubran," said he, "your men are ready?"

"They have been ready these four-and-twenty hours, monsieur."

"Good. You are a brisk soldier, d'Aubran. You are a man to be relied upon."

D'Aubran bowed. He was a tall, active young fellow with a pleasant face and a pair of fine black eyes.

"Monsieur le Seneschal is very good."

With a wave of the hand the Seneschal belittled his own goodness.

"You will march out of Grenoble within the hour, Captain, and you will lead your men to Montelimar. There you will quarter them, and await my further orders. Babylas will give you a letter to the authorities, charging them to find you suitable quarters. While there, d'Aubran, and until my further orders reach you, you will employ your time in probing the feeling in the hill district. You understand?"

"Imperfectly," d'Aubran confessed.

"You will understand better when you have been in Montelimar a week or so. It may, of course, be a false alarm. Still, we must safeguard the King's interests and be prepared. Perhaps we may afterwards be charged with starting at shadows; but it is better to be on the alert from the moment the shadow is perceived than to wait until the substance itself has overwhelmed us."

It sounded so very much as if the Seneschal's words really had some hidden meaning, that d'Aubran, if not content with going upon an errand of which he knew so little, was, at least, reconciled to obey the orders he received. He uttered words that conveyed some such idea to Tressan's mind, and within a half-hour he was marching out of Grenoble with beating drums, on his two days' journey to Montelimar.

Chapter 4 THE CHATEAU DE CONDILLAC

As Captain d'Aubran and his troop were speeding westwards from Grenoble, Monsieur de Garnache, ever attended by his man, rode briskly in the opposite direction, towards the grey towers of Condillac, that reared themselves towards the greyer sky above the valley of the Isere. It was a chill, dull, autumnal day, with a raw wind blowing from the Alps; its breath was damp, and foretold of the rain that was likely to come anon, the rain with which the clouds hanging low about the distant hills were pregnant.

But Monsieur de Garnache was totally insensible to his surroundings; his mind was very busy with the interview from which he had come, and the interview to which he was speeding. Once he permitted himself a digression, that he might point a moral for the benefit of his servant.

"You see, Rebecque, what a plague it is to have to do with women. Are you sufficiently grateful to me for having quelled your matrimonial ardour of two months ago? No, you are not. Grateful you may be; sufficiently grateful, never; it would be impossible. No gratitude could be commensurate with the benefit I conferred upon you. Yet if you had married, and discovered for yourself the troubles that come from too close an association with that sex which some wag of old ironically called the weaker, and of which contemporary fools with no sense of irony continue so to speak in good faith, you could have blamed only yourself. You would have shrugged your shoulders and made the best of it, realizing that no other man had put this wrong upon you. But with me - thousand devils! - it is very different. I am a man who, in one particular at least, has chosen his way of life with care; I have seen to it that I should walk a road unencumbered by any petticoat. What happens? What comes of all my careful plans?

"Fate sends an infernal cut-throat to murder our good king - whose soul God rest eternally! And since his son is of an age too tender to wield the sceptre, the boy's mother does it in his name. Thus, I, a soldier, being subject to the head of the State, find myself, by no devising of my own, subject to a woman.

"In itself that is bad enough. Too bad, indeed - Ventregris! - too bad. Yet Fate is not content. It must occur to this woman to select me - me of all men - to journey into Dauphiny, and release another woman from the clutches of yet a third. And to what shifts are we not put, to what discomforts not subjected? You know them, Rabecque, for you have shared them with me. But it begins to break upon my mind that what we have endured may be as nothing to what may lie before us. It is an ill thing to have to do with women. Yet you, Rabecque, would have deserted me for one of them!"

Rabecque was silent. Maybe he was ashamed of himself; or maybe that, not agreeing with his master, he had yet sufficient appreciation of his position to be discreetly silent where his opinions might be at variance. Thus Garnache was encouraged to continue.

"And what is all this trouble about, which they have sent me to set right? About a marriage. There is a girl wants to marry one man, and a woman who wants to marry her to another. Ponder the possibilities of tragedy in such a situation. Half this world's upheavals have had their source in less. Yet you, Rabecque, would have married!"

Necessity at last turned his discourse to other matters.

"Tell me, now," said he abruptly, in a different tone, "is there hereabouts a ford?"

"There is a bridge up yonder, monsieur," returned the servant, thankful to have the conversation changed.

They rode towards it in silence, Garnache's eyes set now upon the grey pile that crowned the hillock, a half-mile away, on the opposite bank of the stream. They crossed the bridge and rode up the gently rising, bare, and rugged ground towards Condillac. The place wore an entirely peaceful air, strong and massive though it appeared. It was encircled by a ditch, but the drawbridge was down, and the rust on its chains argued that long had it been so.

None coming to challenge them, the pair rode across the planks, and the dull thud of their hooves started into activity some one in the gatehouse.

A fellow rudely clad - a hybrid between man-at-arms and lackey - lounged on a musket to confront them in the gateway. Monsieur de Garnache announced his name, adding that he came to crave an audience of Madame la Marquise, and the man stood aside to admit him. Thus he and Rabecque rode forward into the roughly paved courtyard.

From several doorways other men emerged, some of martial bearing, showing that the place was garrisoned to some extent. Garnache took little heed of them. He flung his reins to the man whom he had first addressed - the fellow had kept pace beside him - and leapt nimbly to the ground, bidding Rabecque await him there.

The soldier lackey resigned the reins to Rabecque, and requested Monsieur de Garnache to follow him. He led the way through a door on the left, down a passage and across an anteroom, and ushered the visitor finally into a spacious, gloomy hall, panelled in black oak and lighted as much by the piled-up fire that flared on the noble hearth as by the grey daylight that filtered through the tall mullioned windows.

As they entered, a liver-coloured hound that lay stretched before the fire growled lazily, and showed the whites of his eyes. Paying little attention to the dog, Garnache looked about him. The apartment was handsome beyond praise, in a sombre, noble fashion. It was hung with pictures of departed Condillacs - some of them rudely wrought enough - with trophies of ancient armour, and with implements of the chase. In the centre stood an oblong table of black oak, very richly carved about its massive legs, and in a china bowl, on this, an armful of late roses filled the room with their sweet fragrance.

Then Garnache espied a page on the window-seat, industriously burnishing a cuirass. He pursued his task, indifferent to the newcomer's advent, until the knave who had conducted thither the Parisian called the boy and bade him go tell the Marquise that a Monsieur de Garnache, with a message from the Queen-Regent, begged an audience.

The boy rose, and simultaneously, out of a great chair by the hearth, whose tall back had hitherto concealed him, there rose another figure. This was a stripling of some twenty summers - twenty-one, in fact - of a pale, beautifully featured face, black hair and fine black eyes, and very sumptuously clad in a suit of shimmering silk whose colour shifted from green to purple as he moved.

Monsieur de Garnache assumed that he was in the presence of Marius de Condillac. He bowed a trifle stiffly, and was surprised to have his bow returned with a graciousness that amounted almost to cordiality.

"You are from Paris, monsieur?" said the young man, in a gentle, pleasant voice. "I fear you have had indifferent weather for your journey."

Garnache thought of other things besides the weather that he had found indifferent, and he felt warmed almost to the point of anger at the very recollection. But he bowed again, and answered amiably enough.

The young man offered him a seat, assuring him that his mother would not keep him waiting long. The page had already gone upon his errand.

Garnache took the proffered chair, and sank down with creak and jingle to warm himself at the fire.

"From what you have said, I gather that you are Monsieur Marius de Condillac," said he. "I, as you may have heard me announced by your servant, am Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache - at your service."

"We have heard of you, Monsieur de Garnache," said the youth as he crossed his shapely legs of silken violet, and fingered the great pearl that depended from his ear. "But we had thought that by now you would be on your way to Paris."

"No doubt - with Margot," was the grim rejoinder.

But Marius either gathered no suggestion from its grimness, or did not know the name Garnache uttered, for he continued:

"We understood that you were to escort Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to Paris, to place her under the tutelage of the Queen-Regent. I will not conceal from you that we were chagrined at the reflection cast upon Condillac; nevertheless, Her Majesty's word is law in Dauphiny as much as it is in Paris."

"Quite as much, and I am relieved to hear you confess it," said Garnache drily, and he scanned more closely the face of this young man. He found cause to modify the excellent impression he had received at first. Marius's eyebrows were finely pencilled, but they arched a shade too much, and his eyes were set a trifle too closely; the mouth, which had seemed beautiful at first, looked, in addition, on this closer inspection, weak, sensual, and cruel.

There fell upon the momentary silence the sound of an opening door, and both men rose simultaneously to their feet.

In the splendid woman that entered, Monsieur de Garnache saw a wonderful likeness to the boy who stood beside him. She received the emissary very graciously. Marius set a chair for her between the two they had been occupying, and thus interchanging phrases of agreeable greeting the three sat down about the hearth with every show of the greatest amity.

A younger man might have been put out of countenance; the woman's surpassing beauty, her charm of manner, her melodious voice, falling on the ear soft and gentle as a caress, might have turned a man of less firmness a little from his purpose, a little perhaps from his loyalty and the duty that had brought him all the way from Paris. But Monsieur de Garnache was to her thousand graces as insensible as a man of stone. And he came to business briskly. He had no mind to spend the day at her fireside in pleasant, meaningless talk.

"Madame," said he, "monsieur your son informs me that you have heard of me and of the business that brings me into Dauphiny. I had not looked for the honour of journeying quite so far as Condillac; but since Monsieur de Tressan, whom I made my ambassador, appears to have failed so signally, I am constrained to inflict my presence upon you."

"Inflict?" quoth she, with a pretty look of make-believe dismay. "How harsh a word, monsieur!"

The smoothness of the implied compliment annoyed him.

"I will use any word you think more adequate, madame, if you will suggest it," he answered tartly.

"There are a dozen I might suggest that would better fit the case - and with more justice to yourself," she answered, with a smile that revealed a gleam of white teeth behind her scarlet lips. "Marcus, bid Benoit bring wine. Monsieur de Garnache will no doubt be thirsting after his ride."

Garnache said nothing. Acknowledge the courtesy he would not; refuse it he could not. So he sat, and waited for her to speak, his eyes upon the fire.

Madame had already set herself a course. Keener witted than her son, she had readily understood, upon Garnache's being announced to her, that his visit meant the failure of the imposture by which she had sought to be rid of him.

"I think, monsieur," she said presently, watching him from under her lids, "that we have, all of us who are concerned in Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye's affairs, been at cross-purposes. She is an impetuous, impulsive child, and it happened that some little time ago we had words - such things will happen in the most united families. Whilst the heat of her foolish anger was upon her, she wrote a letter to the Queen, in which she desired to be removed from my tutelage. Since then, monsieur, she has come to repent her of it. You, who no doubt understand a woman's mind - "

"Set out upon no such presumption, madame," he interrupted. "I know as little of a woman's mind as any man who thinks he knows a deal - and that is nothing."

She laughed as at an excellent jest, and Marius, overhearing Garnache's retort as he was returning to resume his seat, joined in her laugh.

"Paris is a fine whetstone for a man's wits," said he.

Garnache shrugged his shoulders.

"I take it, madame, that you wish me to understand that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, repenting of her letter, desires no longer to repair to Paris; desires, in fact, to remain here at Condillac in your excellent care."

"You apprehend the position exactly, monsieur."

"To my mind," said he, "it presents few features difficult of apprehension."

Marius's eyes flashed his mother a look of relief; but the Marquise, who had an ear more finely trained, caught the vibration of a second meaning in the emissary's words.

"All being as you say, madame," he continued, "will you tell me why, instead of some message to this purport, you sent Monsieur de Tressan back to me with a girl taken from some kitchen or barnyard, whom it was sought to pass off upon me as Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye?"

The Marquise laughed, and her son, who had shown signs of perturbation, taking his cue from her, laughed too.

"It was a jest, monsieur" - she told him, miserably conscious that the explanation could sound no lamer.

"My compliments, madame, upon the humour that prevails in Dauphiny. But your jest failed of its purpose. It did not amuse me, nor, so far as I could discern, was Monsieur de Tressan greatly taken with it. But all this is of little moment, madame," he continued. "Since you tell me that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye is content to remain here, I am satisfied that it is so."

They were the very words that she desired to hear from him; yet his manner of uttering them gave her little reassurance. The smile on her lips was forced; her watchful eyes smiled not at all.

"Still," he continued, "you will be so good as to remember that I am not my own master in this affair. Were that so, I should not fail to relieve you at once of my unbidden presence."

"Oh, monsieur - "

"But, being the Queen's emissary, I have her orders to obey, and those orders are to convey Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to Paris. They make no allowance for any change that may have occurred in mademoiselle's inclinations. If the journey is now distasteful to her, she has but her own rashness to blame in having sought it herself. What imports is that she is bidden by the Queen to repair to Paris; as a loyal subject she must obey the Queen's commands; you, as a loyal subject, must see to it that she obeys them. So, madame, I count upon your influence with mademoiselle to see that she is ready to set out by noon to-morrow. One day already has been wasted me by your - ah - jest, madame. The Queen likes her ambassadors to be brisk."

The Dowager reclined in her chair, and bit her lip. This man was too keen for her. She had no illusions. He had seen through her as if she had been made of glass; he had penetrated her artifices and detected her falsehoods. Yet feigning to believe her and them, he had first neutralized her only weapons - other than offensive - then used them for her own defeat. Marius it was who took up the conversation.

"Monsieur," he cried - and there was a frown drawing together his fine brows - "what you suggest amounts to a tyranny on the Queen's part."

Garnache was on his feet, his chair grating the polished floor.

"Monsieur says?" quoth he, his glittering eye challenging the rash boy to repeat his words.

But the Dowager intervened with a little trill of laughter.

"Bon Dieu! Marius, what are you saying? Foolish boy! And you, Monsieur de Garnache, do not heed him, I beg you. We are so far from Court in this little corner of Dauphiny, and my son has been reared in so free an atmosphere that he is sometimes betrayed into expressions whose impropriety he does not realize."

Garnache bowed in token of his perfect satisfaction, and at that moment two servants entered bearing flagons and beakers, fruits and sweetmeats, which they placed upon the table. The Dowager rose, and went to do the honours of the board. The servants withdrew.

"You will taste our wine of Condillac, monsieur?"

He acquiesced, expressing thanks, and watched her fill a beaker for him, one for herself, and another for her son. She brought him the cup in her hands. He took it with a grave inclination of the head. Then she proffered him the sweetmeats. To take one, he set down the cup on the table, by which he had also come to stand. His left hand was gloved and held his beaver and whip.

She nibbled, herself, at one of the comfits, and he followed her example. The boy, a trifle sullen since the last words, stood on the hearth with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him.

"Monsieur," she said, "do you think it would enable you to comply with what I have signified to be not only our own wishes, but those of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye herself, if she were to state them to you?"

He looked up sharply, his lips parting in a smile that revealed his strong white teeth.

"Are you proposing another of your jests, madame?"

She laughed outright. A wonderful assurance was hers, thought Monsieur de Garnache. "Mon Dieu! no, monsieur," she cried. "If you will, you may see the lady herself."

He took a turn in the apartment, idly, as does a man in thought.

"Very well," said he, at last. "I do not say that it will alter my determination. But perhaps - yes, I should be glad of an opportunity of the honour of making Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye's acquaintance. But no impersonations, I beg, madame!" He said it half-laughingly, taking his cue from her.

"You need have no fear of any."

She walked to the door, opened it, and called "Gaston!" In answer came the page whom Garnache had found in the room when he was admitted.

"Desire Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to come to us here at once," she bade the boy, and closed the door.

Garnache had been all eyes for some furtive sign, some whispered word; but he had surprised neither.

His pacing had brought him to the opposite end of the board, where stood the cup of wine madame had poured for Marius. His own, Garnache, had left untouched. As if abstractedly, he now took up the beaker, pledged madame with his glance, and drank. She watched him, and suddenly a suspicion darted through her mind - a suspicion that he suspected them.

Dieu! What a man was this! He took no chances. Madame reflected that this augured ill for the success of the last resource upon which, should all else fail, she was counting to keep mademoiselle at Condillac. It seemed incredible that one so wary and watchful should have committed the rashness of venturing alone into Condillac without taking his precautions to ensure his ability to retreat.

In her heart she felt daunted by him. But in the matter of that wine - the faintest of smiles hovered on her lips, her eyebrows went up a shade. Then she took up the cup that had been poured for the Parisian, and bore it to her son.

"Marius, you are not drinking," said she. And seeing a command in her eyes; he took the beaker from her hand and bore it to his lips, emptying the half of it, whilst with the faintest smile of scorn the Dowager swept Garnache a glance of protest, as of one repudiating an unworthy challenge.

Then the door opened, and the eyes of all three were centred upon the girl that entered.

Chapter 5 MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE LOSES HIS TEMPER

"You sent for me, madame," said the girl, seeming to hesitate upon the threshold of the room, and her voice - a pleasant, boyish contralto - was very cold and conveyed a suggestion of disdain.

The Marquise detected that inauspicious note, and was moved by it to regret her already of having embarked upon so bold a game as to confront Monsieur de Garnache with Valerie. It was a step she had decided upon as a last means of convincing the Parisian of the truth of her statement touching the change that had taken place in mademoiselle's inclinations. And she had provided for it as soon as she heard of Garnache's arrival by informing mademoiselle that should she be sent for, she must tell the gentleman from Paris that it was her wish to remain at Condillac. Mademoiselle had incontinently refused, and madame, to win her compliance, had resorted to threats.

"You will do as you consider best, of course," she had said, in a voice that was ominously sweet. "But I promise you that if you do otherwise than as I tell you, you shall be married before sunset to Marius, whether you be willing or not. Monsieur de Garnache comes alone, and if I so will it alone he shall depart or not at all. I have men enough at Condillac to see my orders carried out, no matter what they be.

"You may tell yourself that this fellow will return to help you. Perhaps he will; but when he does, it will be too late so far as you shall be concerned."

Terrified by that threat, Valerie had blenched, and had felt her spirit deserting her.

"And if I comply, madame?" she had asked. "If I do as you wish, if I tell this gentleman that I no longer desire to go to Paris - what then?"

The Dowager's manner had become more affectionate. She had patted the shrinking girl upon the shoulder. "In that case, Valerie, you shall suffer no constraint; you shall continue here as you have done."

"And has there been no constraint hitherto?" had been the girl's indignant rejoinder.

"Hardly, child," the Dowager had returned. "We have sought to guide you to a wise choice - no more than that. Nor shall we do more hereafter if you do my pleasure now and give this Monsieur de Garnache the answer that I bid you. But if you fail me, remember - you marry Marius before nightfall."

She had not waited for the girl to promise her compliance. She was too clever a woman to show anxiety on that score. She left her with that threat vibrating in her mind, confident that she would scare the girl into obedience by the very assurance she exhibited that Valerie would not dare to disobey.

But now, at the sound of that chill voice, at the sight of that calm, resolved countenance, madame was regretting that she had not stayed to receive the girl's promise before she made so very sure of her pliability.

She glanced anxiously at Garnache. His eyes were upon the girl. He was remarking the slender, supple figure, moderately tall and looking taller in its black gown of mourning; the oval face, a trifle pale now from the agitation that stirred her, with its fine level brows, its clear, hazel eyes, and its crown of lustrous brown hair rolled back under the daintiest of white coifs. His glance dwelt appreciatively on the slender nose, with its delicate nostrils, the charming line of mouth and chin, the dazzling whiteness of her skin, conspicuous not only in neck and face but in the long, slender hands that were clasped before her.

These signs of breeding, everywhere proclaimed, left him content that here was no imposture; the girl before him was, indeed, Valerie de La Vauvraye.

At madame's invitation she came forward. Marius hastened to close the door and to set a chair for her, his manner an admirable suggestion of ardour restrained by deference.

She sat down with an outward calm under which none would have suspected the full extent of her agitation, and she bent her eyes upon the man whom the Queen had sent for her deliverance.

After all, Garnache's appearance was hardly suggestive of the role of Perseus which had been thrust upon him. She saw a tall, spare man, with prominent cheek-bones, a gaunt, high-bridged nose, very fierce mustachios, and a pair of eyes that were as keen as sword-blades and felt to her glance as penetrating. There was little about him like to take a woman's fancy or claim more than a moderate share of her attention, even when circumstances rendered her as interested in him as was now Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.

There fell a silence, broken at last by Marius, who leaned, a supple, graceful figure, his elbow resting upon the summit of Valerie's chair.

"Monsieur de Garnache does us the injustice to find a difficulty in believing that you no longer wish to leave us."

That was by no means what Garnache had implied; still, since it really expressed his mind, he did not trouble to correct Marius.

Valerie said nothing, but her eyes travelled to madame's countenance, where she found a frown. Garnache observed the silence, and drew his own conclusions.

"So we have sent for you, Valerie," said the Dowager, taking up her son's sentence, "that you may yourself assure Monsieur de Garnache that it is so."

Her voice was stern; it bore to the girl's ears a subtle, unworded repetition of the threat the Marquise had already voiced. Mademoiselle caught it, and Garnache caught it too, although he failed to interpret it as precisely as he would have liked.

The girl seemed to experience a difficulty in answering. Her eyes roved to Garnache's, and fell away in affright before their glitter. That man's glance seemed to read her very mind, she thought; and suddenly the reflection that had terrified her became her hope. If it were as she deemed it, what matter what she said? He would know the truth, in spite of all.

"Yes, madame," she said at last, and her voice was wholly void of expression. "Yes, monsieur, it is as madame says. It is my wish to remain at Condillac."

From the Dowager, standing a pace or two away from Garnache, came the sound of a half-sigh. Garnache missed nothing. He caught the sound, and accepted it as an expression of relief. The Marquise stepped back a pace; idly, one might have thought; not so thought Garnache. It had this advantage: that it enabled her to stand where he might not watch her face without turning his head. He was content that such was her motive. To defeat her object, to show her that he had guessed it, he stepped back, too, also with that same idleness of air, so that he was once more in line with her. And then he spoke, addressing Valerie.

"Mademoiselle, that you should have written to the Queen in haste is deplorable now that your views have undergone this change. I am a stupid man, mademoiselle, just a blunt soldier with orders to obey and no authority to think. My orders are to conduct you to Paris. Your will was not taken into consideration. I know not how the Queen would have me act, seeing your reluctance; it may be that she would elect to leave you here, as you desire. But it is not for me to arrogate to determine the Queen's mind. I can but be guided by her orders, and those orders leave me no course but one - to ask you, mademoiselle, to make ready immediately to go with me."

The look of relief that swept into Valerie's face, the little flush of colour that warmed her cheeks, hitherto so pale, were all the confirmation that he needed of what he suspected.

"But, monsieur," said Marius, "it must be plain to you that since the Queen's orders are but a compliance with mademoiselle's wishes, now that mademoiselle's wishes have altered, so too would Her Majesty's commands alter to comply with them once more."

"That may be plain to you, monsieur; for me, unfortunately, there are my orders for only guide," Garnache persisted. "Does not mademoiselle herself agree with me?"

She was about to speak; her glance had looked eager, her lips had parted. Then, of a sudden, the little colour faded from her cheeks again, and she seemed stricken with a silence. Garnache's eyes, directed in a sidelong glance to the Marquise's face, surprised there a frown that had prompted that sudden change.

He half-turned, his manner changing suddenly to a freezing civility.

"Madame la Marquise," said he, "I beg with all deference to suggest that I am not allowed the interview you promised me with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye."

The ominous coldness with which he had begun to speak had had a disturbing effect upon the Dowager; the words he uttered, when she had weighed them, brought an immense relief. It seemed, then, that he but needed convincing that this was Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. This argued that for the rest he was satisfied.

"There, monsieur, you are at fault," she cried, and she was smiling into his grave eyes. "Because once I put that jest upon you, you imagine - "

"No, no," he broke in. "You misapprehend me. I do not say that this is not Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye; I do not say that - "

He paused; he was at the end of his resources. He did not know how to put the thing without giving offence, and it had been his resolve - realizing the necessity for it - to conduct this matter with a grave courtesy.

To feel that after having carried the affair so far with a for him - commendable lightness of touch, he should be at a loss for a delicate word to convey a harsh accusation began to anger him. And once Garnache began to be angered, the rest followed quickly. It was just that flaw in his character that had been the ruin of him, that had blighted what otherwise might have been a brilliant career. Astute and wily as a fox, brave as a lion, and active as a panther, gifted with intelligence, insight and resource, he had carried a dozen enterprises up to the very threshold of success, there to have ruined them all by giving way to some sudden access of choler.

So was it now. His pause was but momentary. Yet in that moment, from calm and freezing that he had been, he became ruffled and hot. The change was visible in his heightened colour, in his flashing eyes, and in his twitching mustachios. For just a second he sought to smother his wrath; he had a glimmer of remembrance of the need for caution and diplomacy in the darkness of anger that was descending over him. Then, without further warning, he exploded.

His nervous, sinewy hand clenched itself and fell with a crash upon the table, overturning a flagon and sending a lake of wine across the board, to trickle over at a dozen points and form in puddles at the feet of Valerie. Startled, they all watched him, mademoiselle the most startled of the three.

"Madame," he thundered, "I have been receiving dancing-lessons at your hands for long enough. It is time, I think, we did a little ordinary walking, else shall we get no farther along the road I mean to go and that is the road to Paris with mademoiselle for company."

"Monsieur, monsieur!" cried the startled Marquise, placing herself intrepidly before him; and Marius trembled for her, for so wild did the man seem that he almost feared he might strike her.

"I have heard enough," he blazed. "Not another word from any here in Condillac! I'll take this lady with me now, at once; and if any here raises a finger to resist me, as Heaven is my witness, it will be the last resistance he will ever offer any man. Let a hand be laid upon me, or a sword bared before my eyes, and I swear, madame, that I'll come back and burn this dunghill of rebellion to the ground."

In the blindness of his passion all his fine keenness was cast to the wind, his all-observing watchfulness was smothered in the cloud of anger that oppressed his brain. He never saw the sign that madame made to her son, never so much as noticed Marius's stealthy progress towards the door.

"Oh," he continued, a satirical note running now through his tempestuous voice, "it is a fine thing to cozen each other with honeyed words, with smirks and with grimaces. But we have done with that, madame." He towered grimly above her, shaking a threatening finger in her very face. "We have done with that. We shall resort to deeds, instead."

"Aye, monsieur," she answered very coldly, sneering upon his red-hot fury, "there shall be deeds enough to satisfy even your outrageous thirst for them."

That cold, sneering voice, with its note of threat, was like a hand of ice upon his overheated brain. It cooled him on the instant. He stiffened, and looked about him. He saw that Marius had disappeared, and that mademoiselle had risen and was regarding him with singularly imploring eyes.

He bit his lip in mortified chagrin. He cursed himself inwardly for a fool and a dolt - the more pitiable because he accounted himself cunning above others. Had he but kept his temper, had he done no more than maintain the happy pretence that he was a slave to the orders he had received - a mere machine - he might have gained his ends by sheer audacity. At least, his way of retreat would have remained open, and he might have gone, to return another day with force at his heels.

As it was, that pretty whelp, her son, had been sent, no doubt, for men. He stepped up to Valerie.

"Are you ready, mademoiselle?" said he; for little hope though he might still have of winning through, yet he must do the best to repair the damage that was of his making.

She saw that the storm of passion had passed, and she was infected by the sudden, desperate daring that prompted that question of his.

"I am ready, monsieur," said she, and her boyish voice had an intrepid ring. "I will come with you as I am."

"Then, in God's name, let us be going."

They moved together towards the door, with never another glance for the Dowager where she stood, patting the head of the hound that had risen and come to stand beside her. In silence she watched them, a sinister smile upon her beautiful, ivory face.

Then came a sound of feet and voices in the anteroom. The door was flung violently open, and a half-dozen men with naked swords came blundering into the room, Marius bringing up the rear.

With a cry of fear Valerie shrank back against the panelled wall, her little hands to her cheeks, her eyes dilating with alarm.

Garnache's sword rasped out, an oath rattled from his clenched teeth, and he fell on guard. The men paused, and took his measure. Marius urged them on, as if they had been a pack of dogs.

"At him!" he snapped, his finger pointing, his handsome eyes flashing angrily. "Cut him down!"

They moved; but mademoiselle moved at the same moment. She sprang before them, between their swords and their prey.

"You shall not do it; you shall not do it!" she cried, and her face looked drawn, her eyes distraught. "It is murder - murder, you curs!" And the memory of how that dainty little lady stood undaunted before so much bared steel, to shield him from those assassins, was one that abode ever after with Garnache.

"Mademoiselle," said he, in a quiet voice, "if you will but stand aside there will be some murder done among them first."

But she did not move. Marius clenched his hands, fretted by the delay. The Dowager looked on and smiled and patted her dog's head. To her mademoiselle now turned in appeal.

"Madame," she exclaimed, "you'll not allow it. You'll not let them do this thing. Bid them put up their swords, madame. Bethink you that Monsieur de Garnache is here in the Queen's name."

Too well did madame bethink her of it. Garnache need not plague himself with vexation that his rash temper alone had wrought his ruin now. It had but accelerated it. It was just possible, perhaps, that suavity might have offered him opportunities; but, for the rest, from the moment that he showed himself firm in his resolve to carry mademoiselle to Paris, his doom was sealed. Madame would never willingly have allowed him to leave Condillac alive, for she realized that did she do so he would stir up trouble enough to have them outlawed. He must perish here, and be forgotten. If questions came to be asked later, Condillac would know nothing of him.

"Monsieur de Garnache promised us some fine deeds on his own account," she mocked him. "We but afford him the opportunity to perform them. If these be not enough for his exceeding valour, there are more men without whom we can summon."

A feeling of pity for mademoiselle - perhaps of no more than decency - now overcame Marius. He stepped forward.

"Valerie," he said, "it is not fitting you should remain."

"Aye, take her hence," the Dowager bade him, with a smile. "Her presence is unmanning our fine Parisian."

Eager to do so, over-eager, Marius came forward, past his men-at-arms, until he was but some three paces from the girl and just out of reach of a sudden dart of Garnache's sword.

Softly, very warily, Garnache slipped his right foot a little farther to the right. Suddenly he threw his weight upon it, so that he was clear of the girl. Before they understood what he was about, the thing had taken place. He had leaped forward, caught the young man by the breast of his shimmering doublet, leaped back to shelter beyond mademoiselle, hurled Marius to the ground, and planted his foot, shod as it was in his thickly mudded riding-boot, full upon the boy's long, shapely neck.

"Move so much as a finger, my pretty fellow," he snapped at him, "and I'll crush the life from you as from a toad."

There was a sudden forward movement on the part of the men; but if Garnache was vicious, he was calm. Were he again to lose his temper now, there would indeed be a speedy end to him. That much he knew, and kept repeating to himself, lest he should be tempted to forget it.

"Back!" he bade them in a voice so imperative that they stopped, and looked on with gaping mouths. "Back, or he perishes!" And dropping the point of his sword, he lightly rested it upon the young man's breast.

In dismay they looked to the Dowager for instruction. She craned forward, the smile gone from her lips, a horror in her eyes, her bosom heaving. A moment ago she had smiled upon mademoiselle's outward signs of fear; had mademoiselle been so minded, she might in her turn have smiled now at the terror written large upon the Dowager's own face. But her attention was all absorbed by the swiftly executed act by which Garnache had gained at least a temporary advantage.

She had turned and looked at the strange spectacle of that dauntless man, erect, his foot upon Marius's neck, like some fantastic figure of a contemporary Saint George and a contemporary dragon. She pressed her hands tighter upon her bosom; her eyes sparkled with an odd approval of that brisk deed.

But Garnache's watchful eyes were upon the Dowager. He read the anxious fear that marred the beauty of her face, and he took heart at the sight, for he was dependent upon the extent to which he might work upon her feelings.

"You smiled just now, madame, when it was intended to butcher a man before your eyes. You smile no longer, I observe, at this the first of the fine deeds I promised you."

"Let him go," she said, and her voice was scarce louder than a whisper, horror-laden. "Let him go, monsieur, if you would save your own neck."

"At that price, yes - though, believe me, you are paying too much for so poor a life as this. Still, you value the thing, and I hold it; and so you'll forgive me if I am extortionate."

"Release him, and, in God's name, go your ways. None shall stay you," she promised him.

He smiled. "I'll need some security for that. I do not choose to take your word for it, Madame de Condillac."

"What security can I give you?" she cried, wringing her hands, her eyes on the boy's ashen face ashen from mingling fear and rage - where it showed beyond Garnache's heavy boot.

"Bid one of your knaves summon my servant. I left him awaiting me in the courtyard."

The order was given, and one of the cut-throats departed.

In a tense and anxious silence they awaited his return, though he kept them but an instant.

Rabecque's eyes took on a startled look when he had viewed the situation. Garnache called to him to deprive those present of their weapons.

"And let none refuse, or offer him violence," he added, "or your master's life shall pay the price of it."

The Dowager with a ready anxiety repeated to them his commands. Rabecque, understanding nothing, went from man to man, and received from each his weapons. He placed the armful on the windowseat, at the far end of the apartment, as Garnache bade him. At the other end of the long room, Garnache ordered the disarmed men to range themselves. When that was done, the Parisian removed his foot from his victim's neck.

"Stand up," he commanded, and Marius very readily obeyed him.

Garnache placed himself immediately behind the boy. "Madame," said he, "no harm shall come to your son if he is but wise. Let him disobey me, or let any man in Condillac lift a hand against us, and that shall be the signal for Monsieur de Condillac's death. Mademoiselle, it is your wish to accompany me to Paris?"

"Yes, monsieur," she answered fearlessly, her eyes sparkling now.

"We will be going then. Place yourself alongside of Monsieur de Condillac. Rabecque, follow me. Forward, Monsieur de Condillac. You will be so good as to conduct us to our horses in the courtyard."

They made an odd procession as they marched out of the hall, under the sullen eyes of the baulked cut-throats and their mistress. On the threshold Garnache paused, and looked over his shoulder.

"Are you content, madame? Have you seen fine deeds enough for one day?" he asked her, laughing. But, white to the lips with chagrin, she returned no answer.

Garnache and his party crossed the anteroom, after having taken the precaution to lock the door upon the Marquise and her men, and proceeding down a gloomy passage they gained the courtyard. Here Marius was consoled to find some men of the garrison of Condillac a half-score, or so - all more or less armed, surrounding the horses of Garnache and his lackey. At sight of the odd group that now appeared those ruffians stood at gaze, surprised, and with suspicions aroused by Garnache's naked sword, ready for anything their master might demand of them.

Marius had in that instant a gleam of hope. Thus far, Garnache had been master of the situation. But surely the position would be reversed when Garnache and his man came to mount their horses, particularly considering how hampered they must be by Valerie. This danger Garnache, however, was no less quick to perceive, and with a dismaying promptness did he take his measures.

"Remember," he threatened Monsieur de Condillac, "if any of your men show their teeth it will be the worse for you." They had come to a halt on the threshold of the courtyard. "You will be so good as to bid them retreat through that doorway across the yard yonder."

Marius hesitated. "And if I refuse?" he demanded hardily, but keeping his back to Garnache. The men stirred, and stray words of mingling wonder and anger reached the Parisian.

"You will not," said Garnache, with quiet confidence.

"I think you make too sure," Marius replied, and dissembled his misgivings in a short laugh. Garnache became impatient. His position was not being improved by delay.

"Monsieur de Condillac," said he, speaking quickly and yet with an incisiveness of tone that made his words sound deliberate, "I am a desperate man in a desperate position. Every moment that I tarry here increases my danger and shortens my temper. If you think to temporize in the hope of gaining an opportunity of turning the tables upon me, you must be mad to dream that I shall permit it. Monsieur, you will at once order those men to leave the courtyard by that doorway, or I give you my word of honour that I shall run you through as you stand."

"That would be to destroy yourself," said Marius with an attempted note of confidence.

"I should be no less destroyed by delay," answered Garnache; and added more sharply, "Give the word, monsieur, or I will make an end."

From the movement behind him Marius guessed almost by instinct that Garnache had drawn back for a lunge. At his side Valerie looked over her shoulder, with eyes that were startled but unafraid. For a second Marius considered whether he might not attempt to elude Garnache by a wild and sudden dash towards his men. But the consequences of failure were too fearful.

He shrugged his shoulders, and gave the order. The men hesitated a moment, then shuffled away in the direction indicated. But they went slowly, with much half-whispered, sullen conferring and many a backward glance at Marius and those with him.

"Bid them go faster," snapped Garnache. Marius obeyed him, and the men obeyed Marius, and vanished into the gloom of the archway. After all, thought Monsieur de Condillac, they need go no farther than that doorway; they must have appreciated the situation by now; and he was confident they would have the sense to hold themselves in readiness for a rush in the moment of Garnache's mounting.

But Garnache's next order shattered that last hope.

"Rebecque," said he, without turning his head, "go and lock them in." Before bidding the men go that way, he had satisfied himself that there was a key on the outside of the door. "Monsieur de Condillac," he resumed to Marius, "you will order your men in no way to hinder my servant. I shall act upon any menace of danger to my lackey precisely as I should were I, myself, in danger."

Marius's heart sank within him, as sinks a stone through water. He realized, as his mother had realized a little while before, that in Garnache they had an opponent who took no chances. In a voice thick with the torturing rage of impotence he gave the order upon which the grim Parisian insisted. There followed a silence broken by the fall of Rabecque's heavily shod feet upon the stones of the yard, as he crossed it to do his master's bidding. The door creaked on its hinges; the key grated screaming in its lock, and Rabecque returned to Garnache's side even as Garnache tapped Marius on the shoulder.

"This way, Monsieur de Condillac, if you please," said he, and as Marius turned at last to face him, he stood aside and waved his left hand towards the door through which they had lately emerged. A moment stood the youth facing his stern conqueror; his hands were clenched until the knuckles showed white; his face was a dull crimson. Vainly he sought for words in which to vent some of the malicious chagrin that filled his soul almost to bursting-point. Then, despairing, with a shrug and an inarticulate mutter, he flung past the Parisian, obeying him as the cur obeys, with pendant tail and teeth-revealing snarl.

Garnache closed the door upon him with a bang, and smiled quietly as he turned to Valerie.

"I think we have won through, mademoiselle," said he, with pardonable vanity. "The rest is easy, though you may be subjected to some slight discomfort between this and Grenoble."

She smiled back at him, a pale, timid smile, like a gleam of sunshine from a wintry sky. "That matters nothing," she assured him, and strove to make her voice sound brave.

There was need for speed, and compliments were set aside by Garnache, who, at his best, was not felicitous with them. Valerie felt herself caught by the wrist, a trifle roughly she remembered afterwards, and hurried across the cobbles to the tethered horses, with which Rabecque was already busy. She saw Garnache raise his foot to the stirrup and hoist himself to the saddle. Then he held down a hand to her, bade her set her foot on his, and called with an oath to Rabecque to lend her his assistance. A moment later she was perched in front of Garnache, almost on the withers of his horse. The cobbles rattled under its hooves, the timbers of the drawbridge sent up a booming sound, they were across - out of Condillac - and speeding at a gallop down the white road that led to the river; after them pounded Rabecque, bumping horribly in his saddle, and attempting wildly, and with awful objurgations, to find his stirrups.

They crossed the bridge that spans the Isere and took the road to Grenoble at a sharp pace, with scarce a backward glance at the grey towers of Condillac. Valerie experienced an overwhelming inclination to weep and laugh, to cry and sing at one and the same time; but whether this odd emotion sprang from the happenings in which she had had her part, or from the exhilaration of that mad ride, she could not tell. No doubt it sprang from both, owing a part to each. She controlled herself, however. A shy, upward glance at the stern, set face of the man whose arm encircled and held her fast had a curiously sobering effect upon her. Their eyes met, and he smiled a friendly, reassuring smile, such as a father might have bestowed upon a daughter.

"I do not think that they will charge me with blundering this time," he said.

"Charge you with blundering?" she echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him - and the debt was a heavy one. He had come to her aid in an hour when hope seemed dead. He had come single-handed - save for his man Rabecque; and in a manner that was worthy of being made the subject of an epic, he had carried her out of Condillac, away from the terrible Dowager and her cut-throats. The thought of them sent a shiver through her.

"Do you feel the cold?" he asked concernedly; and that the wind might cut her less, he slackened speed.

"No, no," she cried, her alarm waking again at the thought of the folk of Condillac. "Make haste! Go on, go on! Mon Dieu! if they should overtake us!"

He looked over his shoulder. The road ran straight for over a half-mile behind them, and not a living thing showed upon it.

"You need have no alarm," he smiled. "We are not pursued. They must have realized the futility of attempting to overtake us. Courage, mademoiselle. We shall be in Grenoble presently, and once there, you will have nothing more to fear."

"You are sure of that?" she asked, and there was doubt in her voice.

He smiled reassuringly again. "The Lord Seneschal shall supply us with an escort," he promised confidently.

"Still," she said, "we shall not stay there, I hope, monsieur."

"No longer than may be necessary to procure a coach for you."

"I am glad of that," said she. "I shall know no peace until Grenoble is a good ten leagues behind us. The Marquise and her son are too powerful there."

"Yet their might shall not prevail against the Queen's," he made reply. And as now they rode amain she fell to thanking him, shyly at first, then, as she gathered confidence in her subject, with a greater fervour. But he interrupted her ere she had gone far, "Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye," said he, "you overstate the matter." His tone was chilling almost; and she felt as she had been rebuked. "I am no more than the emissary of Her Majesty - it is to her that your thanks are due."

"Ah, but, monsieur," she returned to the assault, "I owe some thanks to you as well. What other in your place would have done what you have done?"

"I know not that, nor do I greatly care," said he, and laughed, but with a laugh that jarred on her. "That which I did I must have done, no matter whom it was a question of saving. I am but an instrument in this matter, mademoiselle."

His thought was to do no more than belittle the service he had rendered her, to stem her flow of gratitude, since, indeed, he felt, as he said, that it was to the Queen-Regent her thanks were due. All unwitting was it - out of his ignorance of the ways of thought of a sex with which he held the view that it is an ill thing to meddle - that he wounded her by his disclaimer, in which her sensitive maiden fancy imagined a something that was almost contemptuous.

They rode in silence for a little spell, broken at last by Garnache in expression of the thoughts that had come to him as a consequence of what she had said.

"On this same subject of thanks," said he - and as she raised her eyes again she found him smiling almost tenderly - "if any are due between us they are surely due from me to you."

"From you to me?" she asked in wonder.

"Assuredly," said he. "Had you not come between me and the Dowager's assassins there had been an end to me in the hall of Condillac."

Her hazel eyes were very round for a moment, then they narrowed, and little humorous lines formed at the corners of her lips.

"Monsieur de Garnache," said she, with a mock coldness that was a faint echo of his own recent manner, "you overstate the case. That which I did I must have done, no matter whom it was a question of saving. I was but an instrument in this matter, monsieur."

His brows went up. He stared at her a moment, gathering instruction from the shy mockery of her glance. Then he laughed with genuine amusement.

"True," he said. "An instrument you were; but an instrument of Heaven, whereas in me you but behold the instrument of an earthly power. We are not quite quits, you see."

But she felt, at least, that she was quits with him in the matter of his repudiation of her own thanks, and the feeling bridged the unfriendly gap that she had felt was opening out between them; and for no reason in the world that she could think of, she was glad that this was so.

Chapter 6 MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE KEEPS HIS TEMPER

Night had fallen and it had begun to rain when Garnache and Valerie reached Grenoble. They entered the town afoot, the Parisian not desiring to attract attention by being seen in the streets with a lady on the withers of his horse.

With thought for her comfort, Monsieur de Garnache had divested himself of his heavy horseman's cloak and insisted upon her assuming it, so setting it about her that her head was covered as by a wimple. Thus was she protected not only from the rain, but from the gaze of the inquisitive.

They made their way in the drizzle, through the greasy, slippery streets ashine with the lights that fell from door and window, Rabecque following closely with the horses. Garnache made straight for his inn - the Auberge du Veau qui Tete - which enjoyed the advantage of facing the Palais Seneschal.

The ostler took charge of the nags, and the landlord conducted them to a room above-stairs, which he placed at mademoiselle's disposal. That done, Garnache left Rabecque on guard, and proceeded to make the necessary arrangements for the journey that lay before them. He began by what he conceived to be the more urgent measure, and stepping across to the Palais Seneschal, he demanded to see Monsieur de Tressan at once.

Ushered into the Lord Seneschal's presence, he startled that obese gentleman by the announcement that he had returned from Condillac with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, and that he would require an escort to accompany them to Paris.

"For I am by no means minded to be exposed to such measures as the tigress of Condillac and her cub may take to recover their victim," he explained with a grim smile.

The Seneschal combed his beard and screwed up his pale eyes until they vanished in the cushions of his cheeks. He was lost in amazement. He could only imagine that the Queen's emissary had been duped more successfully this time.

"I am to gather, then," said he, dissembling what was passing through his mind, "that you delivered the lady by force or strategy."

"By both, monsieur," was the short answer.

Tressan continued to comb his beard, and pondered the situation. If things were so, indeed, they could not have fallen out more to his taste. He had had no hand in it, one way or the other. He had run with the hare and hunted with the hounds, and neither party could charge him with any lack of loyalty. His admiration and respect for Monsieur de Garnache grew enormously. When the rash Parisian had left him that afternoon for the purpose of carrying his message himself to Condillac, Tressan had entertained little hope of ever again seeing him alive. Yet there he stood, as calm and composed as ever, announcing that singlehanded he had carried out what another might well have hesitated to attempt with a regiment at his heels.

Tressan's curiosity urged him to beg for the details of this marvel, and Garnache entertained him with a brief recital of what had taken place, whereat, realizing that Garnache had indeed outwitted them, the Seneschal's wonder increased.

"But we are not out of the quagmire yet," cried Garnache; "and that is why I want an escort."

Tressan became uneasy. "How many men shall you require?" he asked, thinking that the Parisian would demand at least the half of a company.

"A half-dozen and a sergeant to command them."

Tressan's uneasiness was dissipated, and he found himself despising Garnache more for his rashness in being content with so small a number than he respected him for the boldness and courage he had so lately displayed. It was not for him to suggest that the force might prove insufficient; rather was it for him to be thankful that Garnache had not asked for more. An escort Tressan dared not refuse him, and yet refuse it him he must have done - or broken with the Condillacs - had he asked for a greater number. But six men! Pooh! they would be of little account. So he very readily consented, inquiring how soon Garnache would require them.

"At once," was the Parisian's answer. "I leave Grenoble to-night. I hope to set out in an hour's time. Meanwhile I'll have the troopers form a guard of honour. I am lodged over the way."

Tressan, but too glad to be quit of him, rose there and then to give the necessary orders, and within ten minutes Garnache was back at the Sucking Calf with six troopers and a sergeant, who had left their horses in the Seneschal's stables until the time for setting out. Meanwhile Garnache placed them on duty in the common-room of the inn.

He called for refreshment for them, and bade them remain there at the orders of his man Rabecque. His reason for this step was that it became necessary that he should absent himself for a while to find a carriage suitable for the journey; for as the Sucking Calf was not a post-house he must seek one elsewhere - at the Auberge de France, in fact, which was situate on the eastern side of the town by the Porte de Savoie - and he was not minded to leave the person of Valerie unguarded during his absence. The half-dozen troopers he considered ample, as indeed they were.

On this errand he departed, wrapped tightly in his cloak, walking briskly through the now heavier rain.

But at the Auberge de France a disappointment awaited him. The host had no horses and no carriage, nor would he have until the following morning. He was sorrow-stricken that the circumstance should discompose Monsieur de Garnache; he was elaborate in his explanations of how it happened that he could place no vehicle at Monsieur de Garnache's disposal - so elaborate that it is surprising Monsieur de Garnache's suspicions should not have been aroused. For the truth of the matter was that the folk of Condillac had been at the Auberge de France before him - as they had been elsewhere in the town wherever a conveyance might be procurable - and by promises of reward for obedience and threats of punishment for disobedience, they had contrived that Garnache should hear this same story on every hand. His mistake had lain in his eagerness to obtain a guard from the Seneschal. Had he begun by making sure of a conveyance, anticipating, as he should have done, this move on the part of the Condillacs - a move which he did not even now suspect - it is possible that he might have been spared much of the trouble that was to follow.

An hour or so later, after having vainly ransacked the town for the thing he needed, he returned wet and annoyed to the Veau qui Tote. In a corner of the spacious common-room - a corner by the door leading to the interior of the inn - he saw the six troopers at table, waxing a trifle noisy over cards. Their sergeant sat a little apart, in conversation with the landlord's wife, eyes upturned adoringly, oblivious of the increasing scowl that gathered about her watchful husband's brow.

At another table sat four gentlemen - seemingly travellers, by their air and garb - in a conversation that was hushed at Garnache's entrance. But he paid no heed to them as he stalked with ringing step across the rushstrewn floor, nor observed how covertly and watchfully their glances followed him as returning, in passing the sergeant's prompt salute he vanished through the doorway leading to the stairs.

He reappeared again a moment later, to call the host, and give him orders for the preparing of his own and Rabecque's supper.

On the landing above he found Rabecque awaiting him.

"Is all well?" he asked, and received from his lackey a reassuring answer.

Mademoiselle welcomed him gladly. His long absence, it appeared, had been giving her concern. He told her on what errand he had been, and alarm overspread her face upon hearing its result.

"But, monsieur," she cried, "you are not proposing that I should remain a night in Grenoble."

"What alternative have we?" he asked, and his brows met, impatient at what he accounted no more than feminine whimsey.

"It is not safe," she exclaimed, her fears increasing. "You do not know how powerful are the Condillacs."

He strode to the fire, and the logs hissed under the pressure of his wet boot. He set his back to the blaze, and smiled down upon her.

"Nor do you know how powerful are we," he answered easily. "I have below six troopers and a sergeant of the Seneschal's regiment; with myself and Rabecque we are nine men in all. That should be a sufficient guard, mademoiselle. Nor do I think that with all their power the Condillacs will venture here to claim you at the sword point."

"And yet," she answered, for all that she was plainly reassured, at least in part, "I would rather you had got me a horse, that we might have ridden to Saint Marcellin, where no doubt a carriage might be obtained."

"I did not see the need to put you to so much discomfort," he returned. "It is raining heavily."

"Oh, what of that?" she flung back impatiently.

"Besides," he added, "it seems there are no horses at the post-house. A benighted place this Dauphiny of yours, mademoiselle."

But she never heeded the gibe at her native province. "No horses?" she echoed, and her hazel eyes looked up sharply, the alarm returning to her face. She rose, and approached him. "Surely that is impossible."

"I assure you that it is as I say - neither at the post-house nor at any of the inns I visited could I find me a spare horse."

"Monsieur," she cried, "I see the hand of Condillac in this."

"As how?" he inquired, and his tone again was quickened by impatience.

"They have anticipated you. They seek to keep you here - to keep us in Grenoble."

"But to what end?" he asked, his impatience growing. "The Auberge de France has promised me a carriage in the morning. What shall it avail them at Condillac to keep us here to-night?"

"They may have some project. Oh, monsieur! I am full of fears."

"Dismiss them," he answered lightly; and to reassure her he added, smiling: "Rest assured we shall keep good watch over you, Rabecque and I and the troopers. A guard shall remain in the passage throughout the night. Rabecque and I will take turn about at sentry-go. Will that give you peace?"

"You are very good," she said, her voice quivering with feeling and real gratitude, and as he was departing she called after him. "You will be careful of yourself," she said.

He paused under the lintel, and turned, surprised. "It is a habit of mine," said he, with a glint of humour in his eye.

But there was no answering smile from her. Her face was all anxiety.

"Beware of pitfalls," she bade him. "Go warily; they are cruelly cunning, those folk of Condillac. And if evil should befall you… "

"There would still remain Rabecque and the troopers," he concluded.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I implore you to be careful," she insisted.

"You may depend upon me," he said, and closed the door.

Outside he called Rabecque, and together they went below. But mindful of her fears, he dispatched one of the troopers to stand sentry outside her door whilst he and his lackey supped. That done, he called the host, and set himself at table, Rabecque at his elbow in attendance to hand him the dishes and pour his wine.

Across the low-ceilinged room the four travellers still sat in talk, and as Garnache seated himself, one of them shouted for the host and asked in an impatient tone to know if his supper was soon to come.

"In a moment, sir," answered the landlord respectfully, and he turned again to the Parisian. He went out to bring the latter's meal, and whilst he was gone Rabecque heard from his master the reason of their remaining that night in Grenoble. The inference drawn by the astute lackey - and freely expressed by him - from the lack of horses or carriages in Grenoble that night, coincided oddly with Valerie's. He too gave it as his opinion that his master had been forestalled by the Dowager's people, and without presuming to advise Garnache to go warily - a piece of advice that Garnache would have resented, to the extent perhaps of boxing the fellow's ears - he determined, there and then, to keep a close watch upon his master, and under no circumstances, if possible, permit him to leave the Sucking Calf that night.

The host returned, bearing a platter on which there steamed a ragout that gave out an appetizing odour; his wife followed with other dishes and a bottle of Armagnac under her arm. Rabecque busied himself at once, and his hungry master disposed himself to satisfy the healthiest appetite in France, when suddenly a shadow fell across the table. A man had come to stand beside it, his body screening the light of one of the lamps that hung from a rafter of the ceiling.

"At last!" he exclaimed, and his voice was harsh with ill-humour.

Garnache looked up, pausing in the very act of helping himself to that ragout. Rabecque looked up from behind his master, and his lips tightened. The host looked up from the act of drawing the cork of the flagon he had taken from his wife, and his eyes grew big as in his mind he prepared a judicious blend of apology and remonstrance wherewith to soothe this very impatient gentleman. But before he could speak, Garnache's voice cut sharply into the silence. An interruption at such a moment vexed him sorely.

"Monsieur says?" quoth he.

"To you, sir - nothing," answered the fellow impudently, and looked him straight between the eyes.

With a flush mounting to his cheeks, and his brows drawn together in perplexity, Garnache surveyed him. He was that same traveller who had lately clamoured to know when he might sup, a man of rather more than middle height, lithe and active of frame, yet with a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest that argued strength and endurance as well. He had fair, wavy hair, which he wore rather longer than was the mode, brown eyes, and a face which, without being handsome, was yet more than ordinarily engaging by virtue of its strength and frank ingenuousness. His dress was his worst feature. It was flamboyant and showy; cheap, and tawdrily pretentious. Yet he bore himself with the easy dignity of a man who counts more inferiors than superiors.

Despite the arrogant manner of his address, Garnache felt prepossessed in the newcomer's favour. But before he could answer him, the host was speaking.

"Monsieur mistakes… " he began.

"Mistakes?" thundered the other in an accent slightly foreign. "It is you who mistake if you propose to tell me that this is not my supper. Am I to wait all night, while every jackanapes who follows me into your pigsty is to be served before me?"

"Jackanapes?" said Garnache thoughtfully, and looked the man in the face again. Behind the stranger pressed his three companions now, whilst the troopers across the room forgot their card-play to watch the altercation that seemed to impend.

The foreigner - for such, indeed, his French proclaimed him - turned half-contemptuously to the host, ignoring Garnache with an air that was studiously offensive.

"Jackanapes?" murmured Garnache again, and he, too, turned to the host. "Tell me, Monsieur l'Hote," said he, "where do the jackanapes bury their dead in Grenoble? I may need the information."

Before the distressed landlord could utter a word, the stranger had wheeled about again to face Garnache. "What shall that mean?" he asked sharply, a great fierceness in his glance.

"That Grenoble may be witnessing the funeral of a foreign bully by to-morrow, Monsieur l'Etranger," said Garnache, showing his teeth in a pleasant smile. He became conscious in that moment of a pressure on his shoulder blade, but paid no heed to it, intent on watching the other's countenance. It expressed surprise a moment, then grew dark with anger.

"Do you mean that for me, sir?" he growled.

Garnache spread his hands. "If monsieur feels that the cap fits him, I shall not stay him in the act of donning it."

The stranger set one hand upon the table, and leaned forward towards Garnache. "May I ask monsieur to be a little more definite?" he begged.

Garnache sat back in his chair and surveyed the man, smiling. Quick though his temper usually might be, it was checked at present by amusement. He had seen in his time many quarrels spring from the flimsiest of motives, but surely never had he seen one quite so self-begotten. It was almost as if the fellow had come there of set purpose to pick it with him.

A suspicion flashed across his mind. He remembered the warning mademoiselle had given him. And he wondered. Was this a trick to lure him to some guet-apens? He surveyed his man more closely; but the inspection lent no colour to his suspicions. The stranger looked so frank and honest; then again his accent was foreign. It might very well be that he was some Savoyard lordling unused to being kept waiting, and that his hunger made him irritable and impatient. If that were so, assuredly the fellow deserved a lesson that should show him he was now in France, where different manners obtained to those that he displayed; yet, lest he should be something else, Garnache determined to pursue a policy of conciliation. It would be a madness to embroil himself just then, whether this fellow were of Condillac or not.

"I have asked you, monsieur," the stranger insisted, "to be a little more definite."

Garnache's smile broadened and grew more friendly. "Frankly," said he, "I experience difficulty. My remark was vague. I meant it so to be."

"But it offended me, monsieur," the other answered sharply.

The Parisian raised his eyebrows, and pursed his lips. "Then I deplore it," said he. And now he had to endure the hardest trial of all. The stranger's expression changed to one of wondering scorn.

"Do I understand that monsieur apologizes?"

Garnache felt himself crimsoning; his self-control was slipping from him; the pressure against his shoulder blade was renewed, and in time he became aware of it and knew it for a warning from Rabecque.

"I cannot conceive, sir, that I have offended," said he at length, keeping a tight hand upon his every instinct - which was to knock this impertinent stranger down. "But if I have, I beg that you will believe that I have done so unwittingly. I had no such intent."

The stranger removed his hand from the table and drew himself erect.

"So much for that, then," said he, provokingly contemptuous. "If you will be as amiable in the matter of the supper I shall be glad to terminate an acquaintance which I can see no honour to myself in pursuing."

This, Garnache felt, was more than he could endure. A spasm of passion crossed his face, another instant and despite Rabecque's frantic proddings he might have flung the ragout in the gentleman's face; when suddenly came the landlord unexpectedly to the rescue.

"Monsieur, here comes your supper now," he announced, as his wife reentered from the kitchen with a laden tray.

For a moment the stranger seemed out of countenance. Then he looked with cold insolence from the dishes set before Garnache to those which were being set for himself.

"Ah," said he, and his tone was an insult unsurpassable, "perhaps it is to be preferred. This ragout grows cold, I think."

He sniffed, and turning on his heel, without word or sign of salutation to Garnache, he passed to the next table, and sat down with his companions. The Parisian's eyes followed him, and they blazed with suppressed wrath. Never in all his life had he exercised such self-control as he was exercising then - which was the reason why he had failed to achieve greatness - and he was exercising it for the sake of that child above-stairs, and because he kept ever-present in his mind the thought that she must come to grievous harm if ill befell himself. But he controlled his passion at the cost of his appetite. He could not eat, so enraged was he. And so he pushed the platter from him, and rose.

He turned to Rabecque, and the sight of his face sent the lackey back a pace or two in very fear. He waved his hand to the table.

"Sup, Rabecque," said he. "Then come to me above."

And followed, as before, by the eyes of the stranger and his companions, Garnache strode out of the room, and mounting the stairs went to find solace in talk with Valerie. But however impossible he might find it to digest the affront he had swallowed, no word of the matter did he utter to the girl, lest it should cause her fears to reawaken.

Chapter 7 THE OPENING OF THE TRAP

Garnache spent a sleepless night at Grenoble, on guard throughout the greater part of it since nothing short of that would appease the fears of Valerie. Yet it passed without any bellicose manifestation on the part of the Condillacs such as Valerie feared and such as Garnache was satisfied would not - could not, indeed - take place.

Betimes next morning he dispatched Rabecque to the Auberge de France for the promised carriage, and broke his fast in the common-room what time he awaited his man's return. The chamber was again occupied by the stranger of yesternight, who sat apart, however, and seemed no longer disposed to interfere with the Parisian. Garnache wondered idly, might this be due to the circumstance that that same stranger was supported now by one single companion, and was therefore less valorous than when he had been in the company of three.

At another table were two gentlemen, sprung he knew not whence, quiet in dress and orderly in manner, to whom he paid little heed until one of them a slender, swarthy, hawk-faced fellow - looking up suddenly, started slightly at sight of the Parisian and addressed him instantly by name. Garnache paused in the act of rising from table, half-turned, and sharply scrutinized the swarthy gentleman, but failed to recognize him. He advanced towards him.

"I have the honour to be known to you, monsieur?" he half-stated, half-inquired.

"Parbleu, Monsieur de Garnache!" exclaimed the other with a ready smile, the more winning since it lighted up a face that at rest was very sombre. "Lives there a Parisian to whom you are not known? I have seen you often at the Hotel de Bourgogne."

Garnache acknowledged the courtesy by a slight inclination of the head.

"And once," continued the other, "I had the honour to be presented to you by Monsieur le Duc himself. My name is Gaubert - Fabre Gaubert." And as he introduced himself he rose out of respect for Garnache, who had remained standing. Garnache knew him not at all, yet never doubted that his tale was true; the fellow had a very courtly, winning air; moreover, Garnache was beginning to feel lonely in the wilds of Dauphiny, so that it rejoiced him to come into the company of one whom he might regard as something of a fellow-creature. He held out his hand.

"I am honoured in that you should have borne me in your memory, monsieur," said he. He was about to add that he would be overjoyed if it should happen that Monsieur Gaubert was travelling to Paris, since he might give himself the pleasure of his company on that tedious journey; but he checked himself betimes. He had no reason to suspect this gentleman; and yet, all things considered, he bethought him suddenly that he would do well to observe the greatest circumspection. So with a pleasant but meaningless civility touching Monsieur Gaubert's presence in those parts, Garnache passed on and gained the door. He paused in the porch, above which the rebus-like sign of the Sucking Calf creaked and grated in each gust of the chill wind that was blowing from the Alps. The rain had ceased, but the sky was dark and heavy with great banks of scudding clouds. In the street the men of his escort sat their horses, having mounted at his bidding in readiness for the journey. A word or two he exchanged with the sergeant, and then with a great rumble the clumsy carriage from the Auberge de France heralded its approach. It rolled up the street, a vast machine of wood and leather, drawn by three horses, and drew up at the door of the inn. Out sprang Rabecque, to be immediately sent by his master to summon mademoiselle. They would set out upon the instant.

Rabecque turned to obey; but in that same moment he was thrust rudely aside by a man with the air of a servant, who issued from he inn carrying a valise; after him, following close upon his heels, with head held high and eyes that looked straight before him and took no heed of Garnache, came the foreigner of yesternight.

Rabecque, his shoulders touching the timbers of the porch, against which he had been thrust, remained at gaze, following with resentful eye the fellow who had so rudely used him. Garnache, on the other side, watched with some wonder the advent of the ingenuous-looking stranger, but as yet with no suspicion of his intent.

Not until the servant had thrown open the door of the coach and deposited within the valise he carried, did Garnache stir. Not, indeed, until the foreigner's foot was on the step preparatory to mounting did Garnache speak.

"Hi! monsieur," he called to him, "what is your pleasure with my carriage?"

The stranger turned, and stared at Garnache with a look of wonder that artfully changed to one of disdainful recognition.

"Ah?" said he, and his eyebrows went up. "The apologetic gentleman! You said?"

Garnache approached him, followed a step not only by Rabecque, but also by Monsieur Gaubert, who had sauntered out a second earlier. Behind them, in the porch, lounged now the foreigner's friend, and behind him again was to be seen the great face and staring, somewhat startled eyes of the landlord.

"I asked you, monsieur," said Garnache, already at grips with that quick temper of his, "what might be your pleasure with my coach?"

"With your coach?" echoed the other, his superciliousness waxing more and more offensive. "Voyons! on! my apologetic friend, do all things in Grenoble belong to you?" He turned to the post-boy, who looked on stolidly. "You are from the Auberge de France, are you not?" quoth he.

"I am, monsieur," replied the man. "This carriage was ordered last night by a gentleman lodging at the Veau qui Tete?"

"Perfectly," replied the stranger, in a tone of finality. "It was ordered by me." And he was about to turn away, when Garnache approached him by yet another step.

"I will ask you to observe, monsieur," said he and for all that his tone and words were civil, that they were forcedly so was obvious from their quiver - "I will ask you to observe that the carriage was fetched by my own man there, who rode hither in it."

The stranger looked him up and down with a curling lip.

"It seems, sir," said he, with a broad sneer, "that you are one of those impertinent fellows who will be for ever thrusting themselves upon gentlemen with an eye to such profit as they can make." He produced a purse and opened it. "Last night it was my supper you usurped. I suffered that. Now you would do the same by my coach, and that I shall not suffer. But there is for your pains, and to be quit of your company." And he tossed a silver coin at the Parisian.

There was an exclamation of horror in the background, and Monsieur de Gaubert thrust himself forward.

"Sir, sir," he exclaimed in an agitated voice, "you cannot know whom you are addressing. This is Monsieur Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache, Mestre-de-Champ in the army of the King."

"Of all those names the one I should opine might fit him best, but for his ugliness, is that of Marie," answered the foreigner, leering, and with a contemptuous shrug he turned again to mount the carriage.

At that all Garnache's self-control deserted him, and he did a thing deplorable. In one of his blind accesses of fury, heedless of the faithful and watchful Rabecque's arresting tug at his sleeve, he stepped forward, and brought a heavy hand down upon the supercilious gentleman's shoulder. He took him in the instant in which, with one foot off the ground and the other on the step of the carriage, the foreigner was easily thrown' off his balance; he dragged him violently backward, span him round and dropped him floundering in the mire of the street-kennel.

That done, there fell a pause - a hush that was ominous of things impending. A little crowd of idlers that had gathered was quickly augmenting now, and from some there came a cry of "Shame!" at Garnache's act of violence.

This is no moment at which to pause to moralize. And yet, how often is it not so? How often does not public sympathy go out to the man who has been assaulted without thought of the extent to which that man may have provoked and goaded his assailant.

That cry of "Shame!" did no more than increase the anger that was mastering Garnache. His mission in Grenoble was forgotten; mademoiselle above-stairs was forgotten; the need for caution and the fear of the Condillacs were forgotten; everything was thrust from his mind but the situation of the moment.

Amid the hush that followed, the stranger picked himself slowly up, and sought to wipe the filth from his face and garments. His servant and his friend flew to his aid, but he waved them aside, and advanced towards Garnache, eyes blazing, lips sneering.

"Perhaps," said he, in that soft, foreign tone of his, laden now with fierce mock-politeness, "perhaps monsieur proposes to apologize again."

"Sir, you are mad," interposed Gaubert. "You are a foreigner, I perceive, else you would - "

But Garnache thrust him quietly aside. "You are very kind, Monsieur Gaubert," said he, and his manner now was one of frozen calm - a manner that betrayed none of the frenzy of seething passion underneath. "I think, sir," said he to the stranger, adopting something of that gentleman's sardonic manner, "that it will be a more peaceful world without you. It is that consideration restrains me from apologizing. And yet, if monsieur will express regret for having sought, and with such lack of manners, to appropriate my carriage - "

"Enough!" broke in the other. "We are wasting time, and I have a long journey before me. Courthon," said he, addressing his friend, "will you bring me the length of this gentleman's sword? My name, sir," he added to Garnache, "is Sanguinetti."

"Faith," said Garnache, "it sorts well with your bloody spirit."

"And will sort well, no doubt, with his condition presently," put in hawk-faced Gaubert. "Monsieur de Garnache, if you have no friend at hand to act for you, I shall esteem myself honoured." And he bowed.

"Why, thanks, sir. You are most opportunely met. You should be a gentleman since you frequent the Hotel de Bourgogne. My thanks."

Gaubert went aside to confer with Monsieur Courthon. Sanguinetti stood apart, his manner haughty and impressive, his eye roaming scornfully through the ranks of what had by now become a crowd. Windows were opening in the street, and heads appearing, and across the way Garnache might have beheld the flabby face of Monsieur de Tressan among the spectators of that little scene.

Rabecque drew near his master.

"Have a care, monsieur," he implored him. "If this should be a trap."

Garnache started. The remark sobered him, and brought to his mind his own suspicions of yesternight, which his present anger had for the moment lulled. Still, he conceived that he had gone too far to extricate himself. But he could at least see to it that he was not drawn away from the place that sheltered mademoiselle. And so he stepped forward, joining Courthon and Gaubert, to insist that the combat should take place in the inn - either in the common room or in the yard. But the landlord, overhearing this, protested loudly that he could not consent to it. He had his house to think of. He swore that they should not fight on his premises, and implored them in the same breath not to attempt it.

At that Garnache, now thoroughly on his guard! was for putting off the encounter.

"Monsieur Courthon," said he - and he felt a flush of shame mounting to his brow, and realized that it may need more courage to avoid an encounter than to engage in one - "there is something that in the heat of passion I forgot; something that renders it difficult for me to meet your friend at present."

Courthon looked at him as he might look at an impertinent lackey.

"And what may that be?" he inquired, mightily contemptuous. There was a snigger from some in the crowd that pressed about them, and even Monsieur Gaubert looked askance.

"Surely, sir," he began, "if I did not know you for Monsieur de Garnache - "

But Garnache did not let him finish.

"Give me air," he cried, and cuffed out to right and left of him at the grinning spectators, who fell back and grinned less broadly. "My reason, Monsieur de Courthon," said he, "is that I do not belong to my self at present. I am in Grenoble on business of the State, as the emissary of the Queen-Regent, and so it would hardly become me to engage in private quarrels."

Courthon raised his brows.

"You should have thought of that before you rolled Monsieur Sanguinetti in the mud," he answered coldly.

"I will tender him my apologies for that," Garnache promised, swallowing hard, "and if he still insists upon a meeting he shall have it in, say, a month's time."

"I cannot permit - " began Courthon, very fiercely.

"You will be so good as to inform your friend of what I have said," Garnache insisted, interrupting him.

Cowed, Courthon shrugged and went apart to confer with his friend.

"Ah!" came Sanguinetti's soft voice, yet loud enough to be heard by all present. "He shall have a caning then for his impertinence." And he called loudly to the post-boy for his whip. But at that insult Garnache's brain seemed to take fire, and his cautious resolutions were reduced to ashes by the conflagration. He stepped forward, and, virulent of tone and terrific of mien, he announced that since Monsieur Sanguinetti took that tone with him, he would cut his throat for him at once and wherever they should please.

At last it was arranged that they should proceed there and then to the Champs aux Capuchins, a half-mile away behind the Franciscan convent.

Accordingly they set out, Sanguinetti and Courthon going first, and Garnache following with Gaubert; the rear being brought up by a regiment of rabble, idlers and citizens, that must have represented a very considerable proportion of the population of Grenoble. This audience heartened Garnache, to whom some measure of reflection had again returned. Before such numbers it was unthinkable that these gentlemen - assuming them to be acting on behalf of Condillac - should dare to attempt foul measures with him. For the rest he had taken the precaution of leaving Rabecque at the Sucking Calf, and he had given the sergeant strict injunctions that he was not to allow any of his men to leave their posts during his absence, and that the troopers were to hold themselves entirely at the orders of Rabecque. Comparatively easy therefore in his mind, and but little exercised by any thought of the coming encounter, Garnache walked briskly along.

They came at last to the Champs aux Capuchins -a pleasant stretch of verdure covering perhaps half an acre and set about by a belt of beech-trees.

The crowd disposed itself on the fringe of the sward, and the duellists went forward, and set about the preparations. Principals and seconds threw off cloak and doublet, and Sanguinetti, Courthon, and Gaubert removed their heavy boots, whilst Garnache did no more than detach the spurs from his.

Sanguinetti, observing this, drew the attention of the others to it, and an altercation arose. It was Gaubert who came to beg Garnache that he should follow the example they had set him in that respect. But Garnache shook his head.

"The turf is sodden."

"But it is precisely on that account, sir," protested Gaubert very earnestly. "In your boots you will be unable to stand firm; you will run the risk of slipping every time that you break ground."

"I venture to think, sir, that that is my affair," said Garnache stiffly.

"But it is not," the other cried. "If you fight in your boots, we must all do the same, and for myself - well, I have not come here to commit suicide."

"Look you, Monsieur Gaubert," said Garnache quietly, "your opponent will be Monsieur Courthon, and since he is in his stockinged feet, there is no reason why you yourself should not remain so too. As for me, I retain my boots, and Monsieur Sanguinetti may have all the advantage that may give him. Since I am content, in Heaven's name let the fight go forward. I am in haste."

Gaubert bowed in submission; but Sanguinetti, who had overheard, turned with an oath.

"By God, no!" said he. "I need no such advantage, sir. Courthon, be so good as to help me on with my boots again." And there was a fresh delay whilst he resumed them.

At last, however, the four men came together, and proceeded to the measurement of swords. It was found that Sanguinetti's was two inches longer than any of the other three.

"It is the usual length in Italy," said Sanguinetti with a shrug.

"If monsieur had realized that he was no longer in Italy, we might perhaps have been spared this very foolish business," answered Garnache testily.

"But what are we to do?" cried the perplexed Gaubert.

"Fight," said Garnache impatiently. "Is there never to be an end to these preliminaries?"

"But I cannot permit you to oppose yourself to a sword two inches longer than your own," cried Gaubert, almost in a temper.

"Why not, if I am satisfied?" asked Garnache. "Mine is the longer reach; thus matters will stand equal."

"Equal?" roared Gaubert. "Your longer reach is an advantage that you had from God, his longer sword is one he had from an armourer. Is that equality?"

"He may have my sword, and I'll take his," cut in the Italian, also showing impatience. "I too am in haste."

"In haste to die, then," snapped Gaubert.

"Monsieur, this is not seemly," Courthon reproved him.

"You shall teach me manners when we engage," snapped the hawk-faced gentleman.

"Sirs, sirs," Garnache implored them, "are we to waste the day in words? Monsieur Gaubert, there are several gentlemen yonder wearing swords; I make no doubt that you will find one whose blade is of the same length as your own, sufficiently obliging to lend it to Monsieur Sanguinetti."

"That is an office that my friend can do for me," interposed Sanguinetti, and thereupon Courthon departed, to return presently with a borrowed weapon of the proper length.

At last it seemed that they might proceed with the business upon which they were come; but Garnache was wrong in so supposing. A discussion now arose between Gaubert and Courthon as to the choice of spot. The turf was drenched and slippery, and for all that they moved from place to place testing the ground, their principals following, nowhere could they find the conditions sufficiently improved to decide upon engaging. To Garnache the utility of this was apparent from the first. If these gentlemen had thought to avoid slippery ground, they should have elected to appoint the meeting elsewhere. But having chosen the Champs aux Capuchins, it was idle to expect that one stretch of turf would prove firmer than another.

Wearied at last by this delay, he gave expression to his thoughts.

"You are quite right, monsieur," said Courthon. "But your second is over-fastidious. It would simplify matters so much if you would remove your boots."

"Look you, sirs," said Garnache, taking a firm stand, "I will engage in my boots and on this very spot or not at all. I have told you that I am in haste. As for the slipperiness of the ground, my opponent will run no greater risks than I. I am not the only impatient one. The spectators are beginning to jeer at us. We shall have every scullion in Grenoble presently saying that we are afraid of one another. Besides which, sirs, I think I am taking cold."

"I am quite of monsieur's mind, myself," drawled Sanguinetti.

"You hear, sir," exclaimed Courthon, turning to Gaubert. "You can scarce persist in finding objections now."

"Why, since all are satisfied, so be it," said Gaubert, with a shrug. "I sought to do the best for my principal. As it is, I wash my hands of all responsibility, and by all means let us engage, sirs."

They disposed themselves accordingly, Gaubert engaging Courthon, on Garnache's right hand, and Garnache himself falling on guard to receive the attack of Sanguinetti. The jeers and murmurs that had been rising from the ever-growing crowd that swarmed about the outskirts of the place fell silent as the clatter of meeting swords rang out at last. And then, scarce were they engaged when a voice arose, calling angrily:

"Hold, Sanguinetti! Wait!"

A big, broad-shouldered man, in a suit of homespun and a featherless hat, thrust his way rudely trough the crowd and broke into the space within the belt of trees. The combatants had fallen apart at this commanding cry, and the newcomer now dashed forward, flushed and out of breath as if with running.

"Vertudieu! Sanguinetti," he swore, and his manner was half-angry, half-bantering; "do you call this friendship?"

"My dear Francois" returned the foreigner, "you arrive most inopportunely."

"And is that all the greeting you have for me?"

Looking more closely, Garnache thought that he recognized in him one of Sanguinetti's companions of yesternight.

"But do you not see that I am engaged?"

"Ay; and that is my grievance that you should be engaged upon such an affair, and that I should have no share in it. It is to treat me like a lackey, and have the right to feel offended. Enfin! It seems I an not come too late."

Garnache cut in. He saw the drift of the fellow's intentions, and he was not minded to submit to fresh delays; already more than half an hour was sped since he had left the Sucking Calf. He put it plainly to them that more than enough delay had there been already and he begged the newcomer to stand aside and allow them to terminate the business on which they were met. But Monsieur Francois - as Sanguinetti had called him - would not hear of it. He proved, indeed, a very testy fellow, and he had, moreover, the support of the others, including even Monsieur Gaubert.

"Let me implore you not to spoil sport, sir," the latter begged Garnache. "I have a friend at the inn who would never forgive me if I permitted him to miss such a morning's diversion as this gentleman is willing to afford him. Suffer me to go for him."

"Look you, sir," answered Garnache sharply, "however you may view this meeting, it is not with me an affair of jest or sport. I am in a quarrel that has been forced upon me, and - "

"Surely not, sir," Courthon interrupted sweetly. "You forget that you rolled Monsieur Sanguinetti in the mud. That is hardly to have a quarrel forced upon you."

Garnache bit his lip to the blood in his vexation.

"However the quarrel may have originated," said Francois, with a great laugh, "I swear that it goes not forward until I am accommodated, too."

"You had better accede, monsieur," murmured Gaubert. "I shall not be gone five minutes, and it will save time in the end."

"Oh, very well," cried poor Garnache in his despair. "Anything to save time; anything! In God's name fetch your friend, and I hope you and he and every man here will get his fill of fighting for once."

Gaubert departed on his errand, and there were fresh murmurs in the mob until the reason of his going was understood. Five minutes sped; ten minutes, and yet he returned not. Grouped together were Sanguinetti and his two friends, in easy, whispered talk. At a little distance from them, Garnache paced up and down to keep himself warm. He had thrown his cloak over his shoulders again, and with sword tucked under arm and head thrust forward, he stamped backwards and forwards, the very picture of ill-humour. Fifteen minutes passed; twelve o'clock boomed from the Church of Saint Francois d'Assisi and still Monsieur Gaubert returned not. Garnache stood still a moment, in angry thought. This must not go on. There must be an end, and at once. The tastes and inclinations of brawlers were no concern of his. He had business of State - however unworthy - to dispatch. He turned, intending to demand of Monsieur Sanguinetti that they should engage at once and be done, when suddenly a fellow roughly dressed, with dirty face and a shock head of fair hair, pushed his way through the throng and advanced towards Monsieur Sanguinetti and his friends. Garnache checked in his movement to look at the fellow, for he recognized in him the ostler of the Auberge de France: He spoke at that moment, and Garnache overheard the words he uttered.

"Monsieur Sanguinetti," said he, addressing that gentleman, "my master sends to inquire if you shall want the carriage you ordered for to-day. It has been standing for an hour at the door of the Auberge de France, awaiting you, and if you don't want it - "

"Standing where?" asked Sanguinetti harshly.

"At the door of the Auberge de France."

"Peste, fool!" cried the foreigner, "why is it there, when I bade it be sent to the Sucking Calf?"

"I don't know, sir. I know no more than Monsieur l'Hote told me."

"Now, a plague on Monsieur l'Hote," swore Sanguinetti, and in that moment his eye fell upon Garnache, standing there, attentive. At sight of the Parisian he seemed lost in confusion. He dropped his glance and appeared on the point of turning aside. Then to the ostler: "I shall want the carriage, and I shall come for it anon. Carry that message to your master." And with that he turned and advanced to Garnache. His whilom arrogance was all fallen from him; he wore instead an air of extreme contrition.

"Monsieur, what shall I say to you?" he asked in a voice that was rather small. "It seems there has been an error. I am deeply grieved, believe me - "

"Say no more, I beg," cried Garnache, immensely relieved that at last there should be a conclusion to an affair which had threatened to be interminable. "Let me but express my regrets for the treatment you received at my hands."

"I accept your expressions, and I admire their generosity," returned the other as courteous now as subservient, indeed, in his courtesy - as he had been erstwhile fierce and intractable. "As for the treatment I received, I confess that my mistake and my opinionativeness deserved it me. I deplore to deprive these gentlemen of the entertainment to which they were looking forward, but unless you should prove of an excessive amiability I am afraid they must suffer with me the consequences of my error."

Garnache assured him very briefly, and none too politely that he did not intend to prove of any excessive amiability. He spoke whilst struggling into his doublet. He felt that he could cheerfully have caned the fellow for the inconvenience he had caused him, and yet he realized that he had other more pressing matters to attend to. He sheathed his sword, took up his cloak and hat, made those gentlemen the compliments that became the occasion, in terms a trifle more brief, perhaps, than were usual, and, still wondering why Monsieur de Gaubert had not yet returned, he stalked briskly away. Followed by the booings of the disappointed crowd, he set out for the Sucking Calf at a sharp pace, taking the shorter way behind the Church and across the graveyard of Saint Francois.

Chapter 8 THE CLOSING OF THE TRAP

Upon leaving the Champs aux Capuchins, hawk-faced Monsieur Gaubert had run every foot of the way to the Sucking Calf, and he had arrived there within some five minutes, out of breath and wearing every appearance of distress - of a distress rather greater than his haste to find his friend should warrant.

At the door of the inn he found the carriage still waiting; the post-boy, however, was in the porch, leaning in talk with one of the drawers. The troopers sat their horses in stolid patience, keeping guard, and awaiting, as they had been bidden, the return of Monsieur de Garnache. Rabecque, very watchful, lounged in the doorway, betraying in his air none of the anxiety and impatience with which he looked for his master.

At sight of Monsieur Gaubert, running so breathlessly, he started forward, wondering and uneasy. Across the street, from the Palais Seneschal, came at that same moment Monsieur de Tressan with rolling gait. He reached the door of the inn together with Monsieur Gaubert.

Full of evil forebodings, Rabecque hailed the runner.

"What has happened?" he cried. "Where is Monsieur de Garnache?"

Gaubert came to a staggering halt; he groaned and wrung his hands.

"Killed!" he panted, rocking himself in a passion of distress. "He has been butchered! Oh! it was horrible!"

Rabecque gripped him by the shoulder, and steadied him with a hand that hurt. "What do you say?" he gasped, his face white to the lips.

Tressan halted, too, and turned upon Gaubert, a look of incredulity in his fat countenance. "Who has been killed?" he asked. "Not Monsieur de Garnache?"

"Helas! yes," groaned the other. "It was a snare, a guet-apens to which they led us. Four of them set upon us in the Champs aux Capuchins. As long as he lived, I stood beside him. But seeing him fallen, I come for help."

"My God!" sobbed Rabecque, and loosed his grasp of Monsieur Gaubert's shoulder.

"Who did it?" inquired Tressan, and his voice rumbled fiercely.

"I know not who they were. The man who picked the quarrel with Monsieur de Garnache called himself Sanguinetti. There is a riot down there at present. There was a crowd to witness the combat, and they have fallen to fighting among themselves. Would to Heaven they had stirred in time to save that poor gentleman from being murdered."

"A riot, did you say?" cried Tressan, the official seeming to awaken in him.

"Aye," answered the other indifferently; "they are cutting one another's throats."

"But … But … Are you sure that he is dead, monsieur?" inquired Rabecque; and his tone was one that implored contradiction.

Gaubert looked and paused, seeming to give the matter a second's thought. "I saw him fall," said he. "It may be that he was no more than wounded."

"And you left him there?" roared the servant. "You left him there?"

Gaubert shrugged his shoulders. "What could I do against four? Besides, the crowd was interfering already, and it seemed best to me to come for help. These soldiers, now - "

"Aye," cut in Tressan, and he turned about and called the sergeant. "This becomes my affair." And he announced his quality to Monsieur Gaubert. "I am the Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny."

"I am fortunate in finding you," returned Gaubert, and bowed. "I could place the matter in no better hand."

But Tressan, without heeding him, was already ordering the sergeant to ride hard with his troopers for the Champs aux Capuchins. Rabecque, however, thrust himself suddenly forward.

"Not so, Monsieur le Seneschal," he interposed in fresh alarm, and mindful of his charge. "These men are here to guard Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. Let them remain. I will go to Monsieur de Garnache."

The Seneschal stared at him with contemptuously pouting underlip. "You will go?" said he. "And what can you do alone? Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Monsieur de Garnache's servant."

"A lackey? Ah!" And Tressan turned aside and resumed his orders as if Rabecque did not exist or had never spoken. "To the Champs aux Capuchins!" said he. "At the gallop, Pommier! I will send others after you."

The sergeant rose in his stirrups and growled an order. The troopers wheeled about; another order, and they were off, their cantering hoofs thundering down the narrow street.

Rabecque clutched at the Lord Seneschal's arm.

"Stop them, monsieur!" he almost screamed in his excitement. "Stop them! There is some snare, some trick in this."

"Stop them?" quoth the Seneschal. "Are you mad?" He shook off Rabecque's detaining hand, and left him, to cross the street again with ponderous and sluggish haste, no doubt to carry out his purpose of sending more troopers to the scene of the disturbance.

Rabecque swore angrily and bitterly, and his vexation had two entirely separate sources. On the one hand his anxiety and affection for his master urged him to run at once to his assistance, whilst Tressan's removal of the troopers rendered it impossible for him to leave Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye unguarded - though what he should do with her if Garnache came not back at all, he did not at this stage pause to consider. On the other hand, an instinctive and growing suspicion of this Monsieur Gaubert - who was now entering the inn - inspired him with the opinion that the fat Seneschal had been duped by a wild tale to send the troopers from the spot where they might presently become very necessary.

Full of fears, anxiety, and mistrust, it was a very dispirited Rabecque that now slowly followed Monsieur Gaubert into the inn. But as he set his foot across the threshold of the common-room, a sight met his eyes that brought him to a momentary standstill, and turned to certainty all his rising suspicions. He found it tenanted by a half-dozen fellows of very rude aspect, all armed and bearing an odd resemblance in air and accoutrements to the braves he had seen at Condillac the day before. As to how they came there, he could only surmise that they had entered through the stable-yard, as otherwise he must have observed their approach. They were grouped now at the other end of the long, low chamber, by the door leading to the interior of the inn. A few paces distant the landlord watched them with uneasy eyes.

But what dismayed Garnache's servant most of all was to see the man who called himself Gaubert standing in talk with a slender, handsome youth, magnificently arrayed, in whom he recognized Marius de Condillac.

Rabecque checked in his advance, and caught in that moment from Marius the words: "Let her be told that it is Monsieur de Garnache wishes her to descend."

At that Rabecque stepped towards them, very purposeful of mien. Gaubert turned at his approach, and smiled. Marius looked up quickly; then made a sign to the men. Instantly two of them went out by the door they guarded, and ere it swung back again Rabecque saw that they were making for the stairs. The remaining four ranged themselves shoulder to shoulder across the doorway, plainly with intent to bar the way. Gaubert, followed immediately by Marius, stepped aside and approached the landlord with arms akimbo and a truculent smile on his pale hawk face. What he and Marius said, Rabecque could not make out, but he distinctly heard the landlord's answer delivered with a respectful bow to Marius:

"Bien, Monsieur de Condillac. I would not interfere in your concerns - not for the world. I will be blind and deaf."

Marius acknowledged the servile protestation by a sneer, and Rabecque, stirring at last, went forward boldly towards the doorway and its ugly, human barrier.

"By your leave, sirs," said he - and he made to thrust one of them aside.

"You cannot pass this way, sir," he was answered, respectfully but firmly.

Rabecque stood still, clenching and unclenching his hands and quivering with anger. It was in that moment that he most fervently cursed Tressan and his stupid meddling. Had the troopers still been there, they could have made short work of these tatter-demalions. As it was, and with Monsieur de Garnache dead, or at least absent, everything seemed at an end. He might have contended that, his master being slain, it was no great matter what he did, for in the end the Condillacs must surely have their way with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. But he never paused to think of that just then. His sense of trust was strong; his duty to his master plain. He stepped back, and drew his sword.

"Let me pass!" he roared. But at the same instant there came the soft slither of another weapon drawn, and Rabecque was forced to turn to meet the onslaught of Monsieur Gaubert.

"You dirty traitor," cried the angry lackey, and that was all they left him breath to say. Strong arms gripped him from behind. The sword was wrenched from his hand. He was flung down heavily, and pinned prone in a corner by one of those bullies who knelt on his spine. And then the door opened again, and poor Rabecque groaned in impotent anguish to behold Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye pause white-faced and wide-eyed on, the threshold at sight of Monsieur de Condillac bowing low before her.

She stood there a moment between the two ruffians who had been sent to fetch her, and her eyes travelling round that room discovered Rabecque in his undignified and half; strangled condition.

"Where … Where is Monsieur de Garnache?" she faltered.

"He is where all those who cross the will of Condillac must sooner or later find themselves," said Marius airily. "He is … disposed of."

"Do you mean that he is dead?" she cried.

"I think it very probable by now," he smiled. "So you see, mademoiselle, since the guardian the Queen appointed you has … deserted you, you would do well to return to my mother's roof. Let me assure you that we shall very gladly welcome your return. We blame none but Garnache for your departure, and he has paid for the brutality of his abduction of you."

She turned in despair from that mocking gentleman, and attempted to make appeal to the landlord, as though he could help her who could not help himself.

"Monsieur l'Hote - " she began, but Marius cut in sharply.

"Take her out that way," he said, and pointed back down the passage by the stairs. "To the coach. Make haste."

She sought to resist them now; but they dragged her back, and there was a rush of the others following through the doorway, the rear being brought up by Gaubert.

"Follow presently," was his parting command to the man who still knelt upon Rabecque, and with that he vanished too.

Their steps died away in the passage; a door banged in the distance. There followed a silence, disturbed only by the sound of Rabecque's laboured breathing; then came a stir outside the door of the inn; some one shouted an order. There was a movement of hoofs, a creak and crunch of wheels, and presently the rumble of a heavy carriage being driven rapidly away. But too well did Rabecque surmise what had taken place.

The ruffian released him at last, and, leaping to his feet, was gone before Rabecque could rise. Once up, however, the lackey darted to the door. In the distance he saw his late assailant running hard; the coach had disappeared. He turned, and his smouldering eye fell upon the landlord.

"O pig!" he apostrophized him, snarling at him to vent some of his pent-up rage. "O cowardly pig."

"What would you?" expostulated the frightened taverner. "They had cut my throat if I resisted them."

Rabecque poured abuse upon him, until for very lack of words he was forced to cease, then, with a final bark of contempt, he went to recover his sword, which had been flung into a corner of the room. He was stooping in the act, when a quick step rang behind him on the threshold, an angry voice harsh and metallic pronounced his name:

"Rebecque!"

The sword clattered from Rabecque's hand suddenly gone nerveless - nerveless with sheer joy, all else forgotten in the perception that there, safe and sound, stood his beloved master.

"Monsieur!" he cried, and the tears welled up to the rough servant's eyes. "Monsieur!" he cried again, and then with the tears streaming down his cheeks, sallow and wrinkled as parchment, "Oh, thank God!" he blubbered. "Thank God!"

"For what?" asked Garnache, coming forward, a scowl like a thunder-cloud upon his brow. "Where is the coach, where the troopers? Where is mademoiselle? Answer me!"

He caught Rabecque's wrist in a grip that threatened to snap it. His face was livid, his eyes aflame.

"They - they -" stammered Rabecque. He had not the courage to tell the thing that had happened. He feared Garnache would strike him dead.

And then out of his terror he gathered an odd daring. He spoke to Garnache as never he had dreamt to speak to him, and it may well be that by his tone and by what he said he saved his life just then.

"You fool," he cried to him. "I told you to be on your guard. I warned you to go warily. But you would not heed me. You know better than Rabecque. You would have your way. You must go a-brawling. And they duped you, they fooled you to the very top of their bent, monsieur."

Garnache dropped the servant's hand and stood back a pace. That counter-blast of passion and that plain speaking from a quarter so unexpected served, in part at least, to sober him. He understood the thing that had happened, the thing that already he suspected must have happened; but he understood too that he alone was to blame for it - he and his cursed temper.

"Who - who fooled me?" he stammered.

"Gaubert - the fellow that calls himself Gaubert. He and his friends. They fooled you away. Then Gaubert returned with a tale that you had been killed and that there was a disturbance in the Champs aux Capuchins. Monsieur de Tressan was here, as ill-luck would have it, and Gaubert implored him to send soldiers thither to quell the riot. He dispatched the escort. I sought in vain to stay them. He would not listen to me. The troopers went, and then Monsieur Gaubert entered the inn, to join Monsieur de Condillac and six of his braves who were waiting there. They overpowered me, and carried mademoiselle off in the coach. I did what I could, but - "

"How long have they been gone?" Garnache interrupted him to inquire.

"But few minutes before you came."

"It would be, then, the coach that passed me near the Porte de Savoie. We must go after them, Rabecque. I made a short cut across the graveyard of Saint Francis, or I must have met the escort. Oh, perdition!" he cried, smiting his clenched right hand into his open left. "To have so much good work undone by a moment's unguardedness." Then abruptly he turned on his heels. "I am going to Monsieur de Tressan," said he over his shoulder, and went out.

As he reached the threshold of the porch, the escort rode up the street, returned at last. At sight of him the sergeant broke into a cry of surprise.

"At least you are safe, monsieur," he said. "We had heard that you were dead, and I feared it must be so, for all that the rest of the story that was told us was clearly part of a very foolish jest."

"Jest? It was no jest, Vertudieu!" said Garnache grimly. "You had best return to the Palais Seneschal. I have no further need of an escort," he added bitterly. "I shall require a larger force."

And he stepped out into the rain, which had begun again a few minutes earlier, and was now falling in a steady downpour.

Chapter 9 THE SENESCHAL'S ADVICE

Straight across the Palais Seneschal went Garnache. And sorely though his temper might already have been tried that day, tempestuously though it had been vented, there were fresh trials in store for him, fresh storms for Tressan.

"May I ask, Monsieur le Seneschal," he demanded arrogantly, "to what end it was that you permitted yourself to order from its post the escort you had placed under my command?"

"To what end?" returned the Seneschal, between sorrow and indignation. "Why, to the end that it might succour you if still in time. I had heard that if not dead already, you were in danger of your life."

The answer was one that disarmed Garnache, in spite of his mistrust of Tressan, and followed as it now was by the Seneschal's profuse expressions of joy at seeing Garnache safe and well, it left him clearly unable to pursue the subject of his grievance in this particular connection. Instead, he passed on to entertain Tressan with the recital of the thing that had been done; and in reciting it his anger revived again, nor did the outward signs of sympathetic perturbation which the Seneschal thought it judicious to display do aught to mollify his feelings.

"And now, monsieur," he concluded, "there remains but one course to be pursued - to return in force, and compel them at the sword-point to surrender me mademoiselle. That accomplished, I shall arrest the Dowager and her son and every jackanapes within that castle. Her men can lie in Grenoble gaol to be dealt with by yourself for supporting her in an attempt to resist the Queen's authority. Madame and her son shall go with me to Paris to answer there for their offence."

The Seneschal looked grave. He thoughtfully combed his beard with his forefinger, and his little eyes peered a shade fearfully at Garnache through his horn-rimmed spectacles - Garnache had found him at his never-failing pretence of work.

"Why, yes," he agreed, speaking slowly, "that way lies your duty."

"I rejoice, monsieur, to hear you say so. For I shall need your aid."

"My aid?" The Seneschal's face assumed a startled look.

"I shall require of you the necessary force to reduce that garrison."

The Seneschal blew out his cheeks almost to bursting point, then wagged his head and smiled wistfully.

"And where," he asked, "am I to find such a force?"

"You have upwards of ten score men in quarters at Grenoble."

"If I had those men - which I have not - what, think you, could they do against a fortress such as Condillac? Monsieur deludes himself. If they resist, you'll need ten times that number to bring them to their senses. They are well victualled; they have an excellent water-supply. My friend, they would just draw up the bridge, and laugh at you and your soldiers from the ramparts."

Garnache looked at him from under lowering brows. But for all his mistrust of the man - a mistrust most excellently founded - he was forced to confess that there was wisdom in what Tressan said.

"I'll sit down and besiege them if need be," he announced.

Again the Seneschal wagged his head. "You would have to be prepared to spend your winter there in that case, and it can be cold in the valley of Isere. Their garrison is small - some twenty men at most; but it is sufficient for their defence, and not too many mouths to feed. No, no, monsieur, if you would win your way by force you must count upon more than ten score men."

And now a flash of inspiration helped Tressan. It was his aim, as we know, to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Break with Madame de Condillac his foolish hopeful heart would not permit him. Break with this man, who personified authority and the King, he dared not. He had sought - and it had given him much to do - to steer a middle course, serving the Dowager and appearing not to withstand the Parisian. Now it almost seemed to him as if he were come to an impasse beyond which he could no longer pursue that course, but must halt and declare his side. But the notion that now occurred to him helped him to win through this difficulty. For Madame de Condillac's schemes he cared not a jot; whether they came safe to harbour or suffered shipwreck on the way was all one to him; whether Valerie de La Vauvraye married Marius de Condillac or the meanest cobbler in Grenoble was, similarly, a matter that never disturbed his mind. He would not even be concerned if he, himself, were to help the Dowager's schemes to frustration, so long as she were to remain in ignorance of his defection, so long as outwardly he were to appear faithful to her interests.

"Monsieur," said he gravely, "the only course that promises you success is to return to Paris, and, raising sufficient men, with guns and other modern siege appliances such as we possess not here, come back and batter down the walls of Condillac."

There the Seneschal spoke good sense. Garnache realized it, so much so that he almost began to doubt whether he had not done the man an injustice in believing him allied to the other party. But, however fully he might perceive the wisdom of the advice, such a step was one that must wound his pride, must be an acknowledgment that his own resources, upon which the Queen had relied when she sent him single-handed to deal with this situation, had proved insufficient.

He took a turn in the apartment without answering, tugging at his mustachios and pondering the situation what time the Seneschal furtively watched him in the candle-light. At last he came abruptly to a standstill by the Seneschal's writing-table, immediately opposite Tressan. His hand fell to his side, his eyes took on a look of determination.

"As a last resource your good advice may guide me, Monsieur le Seneschal," said he. "But first I'll see what can be done with such men as you have here."

"But I have no men," answered Tressan, dismayed to see the failure of his effort.

Garnache stared at him in an unbelief that was fast growing to suspicion. "No men?" he echoed dully. "No men?"

"I might muster a score - no more than that."

"But, monsieur, it is within my knowledge that you have at least two hundred. I saw at least some fifty drawn up in the courtyard below here yesterday morning."

"I had them, monsieur," the Seneschal made haste to cry, his hands upheld, his body leaning forward over his table. "I had them. But, unfortunately, certain disturbances in the neighbourhood of Montelimar have forced me to part with them. They were on the point of setting out when you saw them."

Garnache looked at him a moment without speaking. Then, sharply:

"They must be recalled, monsieur," said he.

And now the Seneschal took refuge in a fine pretence of indignation.

"Recalled?" he cried, and besides indignation there was some horror in his voice. "Recalled? And for what? That they may assist you in obtaining charge of a wretched girl who is so headstrong as to wish to marry other than her guardians have determined. A pretty affair that, as God's my life! And for the adjustment of such a family dispute as this, a whole province is to go to ruin, a conflagration of rebellion is to spread unquenched? On my soul, sir, I begin to think that this mission of yours has served to turn your head. You begin to see it out of all proportion to its size."

"Monsieur, it may have turned my head, or it may not; but I shall not be amazed if in the end it be the means of losing you yours. Tell me now: What is the disturbance you speak of in Montelimar?" That was a question all Tressan's ingenuity could not answer.

"What affair is it of yours?" he demanded. "Are you Seneschal of Dauphiny, or am I? If I tell you that there is a disturbance, let that suffice. In quelling it I do but attend to my own business. Do you attend to yours - which seems to be that of meddling in women's matters."

This was too much. There was such odious truth in it that the iron sank deep into Garnache's soul. The very reflection that such a business should indeed be his, was of itself enough to put him in a rage, without having it cast in his teeth as Tressan had none too delicately done.

He stormed and raged; he waved his arms and thumped the table, and talked of cutting men to ribbons - among which men no doubt he counted my Lord the Seneschal of Dauphiny. But from the storm of fierce invective, of threats and promises with which he filled the air, the Seneschal gathered with satisfaction the one clear statement that he would take his advice.

"I'll do as you say," Garnache had ended. "I'll get me back to Paris as fast as horse can carry me. When I return woe betide Condillac! And I shall send my emissaries into the district of Montelimar to inquire into these disturbances you tell of. Woe betide you if they find the country quiet. You shall pay a heavy price for having dispatched your soldiers thither to the end that they might not be here to further the Queen's business."

With that he caught up his rain-sodden hat, flung it on his head, and stalked out of the room, and, so, out of the Palace.

He left Grenoble next morning, and it was a very tame and crestfallen Garnache who quitted the Auberge du Veau qui Tete and rode out of the town to take the road to Paris. How they would laugh at him at the Luxembourg! Not even an affair of this kind was he fit to carry through; not even as a meddler in women's matters as Tressan had called him - could he achieve success. Rabecque, reflecting his master's mood - as becomes a good lackey - rode silent and gloomy a pace or two in the rear.

By noon they had reached Voiron, and here, at a quiet hostelry, they descended to pause awhile for rest and refreshment. It was a chill, blustering day, and although the rain held off, the heavens were black with the promise of more to come. There was a fire burning in the general-room of the hostelry, and Garnache went to warm him at its cheerful blaze. Moodily he stood there, one hand on the high mantel shelf, one foot upon an andiron, his eyes upon the flames.

He was disconsolately considering his position; considering how utterly, how irrevocably he had failed; pondering the gibes he would have to stomach on his return to Paris, the ridicule it would incumb him to live down. It had been a fine thing to breathe fire and blood and vengeance to Tressan yesterday, to tell him of the great deeds he would perform on his return. It was odds he never would return. They would send another in his place, if indeed they sent at all. For, after all, before he could reach Paris and the force required be in Dauphiny, a fortnight must elapse, let them travel never so quickly. By that time they must be singularly sluggish at Condillac if they did not so contrive that no aid that came should come in time for mademoiselle, now that they were warned that the Queen was stirring in the matter.

Oh! he had blundered it all most cursedly. Had he but kept his temper yesterday at Grenoble; had he but had the wit to thwart their plans, by preserving an unruffled front to insult, he might have won through and carried mademoiselle out of their hands. As it was - ! he let his arms fall to his sides in his miserable despair.

"Your wine, monsieur," said Rabecque at his elbow. He turned, and took the cup of mulled drink from his servant. The beverage warmed him in body; but it would need a butt of it to thaw the misery from his soul.

"Rabecque," he said with a pathetic grimness, "I think I am the most cursed blunderer that ever was entrusted with an errand."

The thing so obsessed his mind that he must speak of it, if it be only to his lackey. Rabecque's sharp face assumed a chastened look. He sighed most dutifully. He sought for words of consolation. At last:

"At least, monsieur has made them fear him up there at Condillac," said he.

"Fear me?" laughed Garnache. "Pish! Deride me, you would say."

"Fear you, I repeat, monsieur. Else why are they at such pains to strengthen the garrison?"

"Eh?" he questioned. But his tone was not greatly interested. "Are they doing that? Are they strengthening it? How know you?"

"I had it from the ostler at the Veau qui Tete that a certain Captain Fortunio - an Italian soldier of fortune who commands the men at Condillac - was at the Auberge de France last night, offering wine to whomsoever would drink with him, and paying for it out of Madame la Marquise's purse. To such as accepted his hospitality he talked of the glory of a military career, particularly a free-lance's; and to those who showed interest in what he said he offered a pike in his company."

"Enrolled he many, did you learn?"

"Not one, monsieur, the ostler told me; and it seems he spent the evening watching him weave his spider's web. But the flies were over-wary. They knew whence he came; they knew the business for which he desired to enrol them - for a rumour had gone round that Condillac was in rebellion against the Queen's commands - and there were none so desperate at the Auberge de France as to risk their necks by enlisting, no matter what the wage he offered."

Garnache shrugged his shoulders. "No matter," said he. "Get me another cup of wine." But as Rabecque turned away to obey him there came a sudden gleam into the eye of Monsieur de Garnache which lightened the depression of his countenance.