It was Monsieur de Commines himself who came for me as I went my rounds of self-instruction three days after The Four Nations had gone a-hunting.

"The King calls you," he said, out of breath with haste; "I think your chance has come, for he has some scheme in his head."

"The King? What! This instant?" and I looked downward at my dress, plain, clean, and serviceable enough, but hardly fit for a court presentation.

"Bah! Catch fortune as she flies. Besides, silks and satins would not become the man who files a wolf's bars to save the King's life, and then hunts the brutes back to their cage at the risk of his own."

"But, Monseigneur, I did none of these things."

"No, but the King thinks you did, and that is the same thing. I told you the counter-plot was too trivial for me to lend my name to it. It would not hoist a man at the top of the ladder an inch higher; but you, who are at the bottom, it may raise a rung, or even two, if you are politic. Come, the King waits; he has his dogs to play with, but he may tire of them at any moment, and your chance be lost. One last word," he went on, as, hurrying at a trot whose pace was very significant in a man of Monseigneur's age and dignity, we drew near the mouth of the Cour au Soleil, where Louis warmed his cold blood in the sun. "Remember, you climb over my back. It is I who have brought you into Plessis, and there are many who would be glad to see you muddy my shoulders; therefore be watchful. Here in a sentence is the way to win and hold court favour. Catch the King's meaning, and jump with his humour, whatever it may be. Hush! not a word till he speaks, he is often like that."

The court was triangular in shape, and faced south. Across the apex of the angle a couch was drawn, and there, stretched upon its cushions, was Louis. One leg was drawn up under him, the other lay straight out, and where it showed below the edge of his mantle the calf was of a bigness no greater than my wrist. A sleeved cloak or coat of scarlet satin, lined and trimmed with ermine, wrapped him to the knees. A tight-fitting cap of the same colour as the cloak covered not alone the scalp, but coming round the back of the head as far as the nape, caught in his ears, leaving only the face exposed, and, my God! what a face it was! Meagre as a death's head, the smooth-shaven skin a yellow parchment, the nose long and thin as a vulture's beak, the full lips withered and shrivelled to a crumpling of livid skin tightened across broken teeth, the eyes—was he awake or asleep? living or dead? for though these eyes were open they had rolled back in their sockets and showed only a narrow splash of muddy grey shot with blood at the corners. One arm hung over the couch-edge almost to the ground, and the whole attitude was the pitiable collapse of a sick old age and utter weariness.

Three or four dogs stood or sprawled beside him, good courtiers all! for they seemed to know his mood, and lay quiet, waiting for the change. One, a coarse-jowled brindled beast that panted for fatness, cowered on its haunches a foot or two away from the couch-head. No member of the court was present, but knots of the King's archers, half-armoured, but with sword and dagger, and carrying their bows, were on guard at every point that commanded the court.

As minute after minute passed, and the King still lay as one dead, there was ample time for the picture to fix itself in my memory. Then, suddenly, the sightless eyes rolled in their sockets, and he awoke.

"Sire," said Monseigneur, as, hat in hand, I went down on one knee, "here is Monsieur de Helville."

"The compatriot of Monsieur Jehan Flemalle?"

"Your majesty's faithful servant."

"Faithful as England, and for the same cause," answered Louis, beckoning with his fingers to the big-jowled dog crouching near him.

The brute saw and understood, for, though the lips twitched till the fangs showed, it flattened itself on its belly and inched nearer to the thin hand it feared. But though the King called the dog, his eyes never left my face, and as I said of the face a moment back so now I say, My God! what eyes they were! Ice and fire, cold, inscrutable, implacable; dead as grey ash, but with the smouldering heat of the ember not far below the film; remorseless eyes that groped the secrets of a man's thoughts as the delicate fingers of the blind grope a face.

"I call him England, after my dear brother Edward," went on Louis, "because though he shows his teeth and would fly at me if he dared, a sop will always bribe him, and, like the King whose premature decease we all so bitterly lament, he will die at last of over-eating. God and Saint Claude forgive me if I seem to speak evil of the dead! Are you as faithful as this my dog, Monsieur de Helville?"

For a moment I was silent, partly because the shrewd, malevolent, fixed gaze fascinated me as men say a serpent fascinates a bird, partly because he had cleft the truth to the very core. I had told Mademoiselle that I owed the King no loyalty, I had even been in two minds as to letting Jan Flemael's plot run a triumphant course; to gain my own ends, and my own ends alone, had brought me to Plessis. As the King had said, my fidelity was no greater than that of the cowed bull-dog, and thereby came a lesson.

The poor brute had crept reluctantly within reach of the beckoning hand, and the thin fingers that looked so frail, but had so much iron of will in them, had gripped the loose skin of the plethoric neck, twisting it till the dog wheezed in an agony of breathlessness. Let the grip close in another half-inch, and it would choke.

"Faithful as England and for the same reason," said the King, reading the truth. "What is the sop that wins your love, Monsieur de Helville?"

"I desire service, Sire."

He grinned contemptuously, grinned till the thin lips twitched up, showing the teeth as England had shown his.

"Pish, man! Leave useless flattery to your betters! You desire Jan Meert's life. Monsieur d'Argenton has told me. Who knows! perhaps you may have it."

The words stung me, or rather, their contempt. It was as if he gave me the lie, and impelled by the smart, I answered more boldly than I had dreamed I would have dared—

"Why not, Sire? A man's house is his house, and if yours were burned would you not lop the hand——"

He stopped me with a laugh; no thin sarcastic smile at such a childish outburst, but full-throated merriment.

"The torch, you mean, Monsieur Hellewyl, not the hand itself; the hand that held the torch was—elsewhere!"

Groping upward, he patted a little leaden image of the Virgin that hung from a loop in his cap, patted it without reverence but rather as one who would say, God is on my side.

"Mary have mercy upon you if you so much as touch that hand except to kiss it; what it gropes it grasps, and what it grasps it crushes. You mean the torch, eh, Monsieur Hellewyl?"

"The torch, then, Sire," said I, shivering a little, so significant was the threat, and so significant too, when taken in conjunction with that threat, the laugh that foreran it; "would you not set your foot on the torch that burned your father's house? Would you not trample it, quench it——?"

"I? I am France, while you are——" He flung aside the half-choked brute with more strength than one would have supposed possible in such a shrunken frame. "Monsieur d'Argenton, take away the dogs, but do not hasten poor England lest he die before his next sop gorges him; and you, Monsieur Hellewyl, wait."

Back he sank upon the cushions, upwards rolled the eyes to sightlessness, and aga............