At what length, and in what terms, Monsieur de Commines berated me I need say little. Those who know his command of vigorous language may judge, but had his tongue been a birch rod, and I a little thievish boy, caught red-handed, I could not have been more sorely lashed. Epithets flew as thick as snow-flakes in winter, but were neither as cold nor as soft. I was a blundering dolt, a thick-headed fool, a self-seeking, ungrateful pick-thank.

But there I stopped him.

"No, Monseigneur, never ungrateful."

"Ungrateful," he persisted. "Here do I bring you to Plessis, vouch for you, sow a thought in the King's mind for you, and when it buds you trample it under foot, never caring that you may trample me down with it. Is that gratitude?"

"A man has his honour, Monseigneur; yes, and something greater than his honour; for when it comes to steeping his soul in a child's blood——"

"A child's blood? What do you mean, de Helville?"

"What thought you sowed I do not know," I answered bluntly and perhaps without much respect, for at the moment my blood was hot, "but the crop was murder, and I was bid go reap it."

The heavy wrinkles on his forehead, wrinkles in which you might have sunk a bow-string out of sight, deepened yet further, and he stood gnawing his lip in silence.

"Yes, I remember now," he said at last. "There is a child, but his name never passed between us, the King and myself, I mean. Mon Dieu! Monsieur de Helville, you surely cannot think His Majesty meant any harm to the boy?"

"You told me, Monseigneur, that my time to think had not yet come, and so, if it pleases you, I shall think nothing," I answered. "I am a plain man, a stranger to Plessis and new to its admirable court ways. It may be when the King says this is black, he means it is white or red or blue, and that to kill a child is to stuff it with sweetmeats. What passed was this," and I told him everything in as few words as I could.

By the time I had ended, he was reasonable. That is where a man frequently differs from a woman; he can see two sides to a question, she only that which reflects her mood of the moment.

"Thank God he seeks peace," said he when I had finished. "Gaspard, my friend, my tongue was too rough just now, and yet I think you were wrong. You should have played him, and so learned his true mind. What he said was to try you, or, at worst, a jest."

"A grim jest, Monseigneur, so grim that the King nearly died of its failure."

Monsieur de Commines shook an open palm in the air as if to push a thought from him.

"You see how we stand, always on the brink of the grave. Some day, to-morrow, next month, next year, the grave-edge will crumble under our feet and yet we dare not say, Sire! take care! All we can do is to hold him back at all costs and in spite of himself. For when that grave shuts——"

Though my knowledge of Plessis could be measured by days, my ears had been open as well as my eyes, and so the snap of the fingers that rounded off the sentence was more informatory than words. It meant, as far as Monseigneur was concerned, a friend's deep sorrow, a crown minister's despair, a courtier's ruin; bereavement instant and irremediable to heart, brain, and ambition; it meant that the present fortunes and future prospects of the living Commines would certainly be buried with the dead King, and perhaps also the glory and greatness of France. Nor do I think the certainty of the one fretted him as sorely as the perhaps of the others. For eleven years Philip de Commines had been the greatest man in the kingdom, serving Louis, France, and himself, and loving all three. Let the grave close over his master, and at the groan of the sepulchral stone rasping to its socket Love and Service perished. But I think that with him, as with every truly great man, his life's work was dearer than himself, and his heart, as he leaned against the little diamond window panes looking out into the narrow court, was bitter for the loss to France rather than at the crumbling of his own fortunes.

"At any cost," he said, repeating the words over and over, "at any cost, at any—any cost."

"Even of a child's murder?"

"What?" he answered looking back across his shoulder, "are you still harping on that blunder? Oh! you Flemish calves! with but one idea in your head!"

"And is Commines not also in Flanders?"

He laughed, and quitting the window came towards me.

"True, friend Gaspard, and a fair hit; but there are great ideas as well as small ones, and it would be a mercy if you and that Martin of yours could think of more than one thing at a time."

"Martin?" said I, in despair at this fresh blow. "My own folly you have made clear, but what has Martin done?"

Monsieur de Commines shook his head gravely, but it was a relief to see a twinkle of humour shining through the gravity in his eyes.
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