Monseigneur made no comment until we were in the freshness of the open air; then he drew a long breath as if a strain had been relaxed.

"It might have been worse. Come, now, that I may fill your purse; you and Martin must leave Plessis to-night."

"But, Monseigneur," I protested, "this is not at all what I desired."

"What you desired! Who comes to Plessis to do what he desires? And remember this, my friend, there is no turning back from the King's plough. But to tell you the truth, it is not what I desired for you, not exactly what I had in my mind for you, and yet I was a true prophet. All is as the King wills. Keep that truth in your head, walk at all times by its light, and your ten days in the rat-trap will not have been wasted."

I made no reply, and we turned the angle of the royal block in silence. In silence, too, we crossed the court to his lodgings; but with his hand upon the latch, Monsieur de Commines, with a gayer note in his voice, repeated my complaint.

"Not all you desired? Perhaps it is; perhaps it is even more than your imagination groped after. The petulance of ignorant youth starts like a shying horse at the first obstacle, and cries: I do not like the road. It is the method that troubles me, not the end. The end!" and the last of the cloud upon his face dissolved in merriment. "I think I would play the end of the game myself if I were five-and-twenty."

"But to be a thief, an abductor of children——"

"Does that choke you? Then why did you not say No! to the King?"

"There was a glamour about him," I began.

"Did I not tell you he had many moods? He can make any man love him—for the moment—when that is his pleasure or his profit. Besides, you over-state the case; there is only one child, and he a very little one."

"It is theft, all the same."

"Pooh! We are all thieves in court when a theft profits. A reputation, an office, a title, a province, it is all a question of degree. What? If I am His Majesty's ambassador at Cologne or Rome—with credentials, mind you!—is it not that I may steal an advantage? The greater the theft, the greater the honour—if only the theft be successful! There you have the world's diplomacy in a sentence. We lie and thieve abroad for the good of our country. Who are you, friend Gaspard, that you should be more scrupulous than I?"

"But what kind of a household shall I find at—at——?"

"Where you are going? Charming, charming; especially if, as I imagine, it is the frank abandonment of country life without etiquette or punctilio."

His harangue upon the honourable methods of court life was, of course, half jest, but there was also so much of truth in his irony that complacency and self-respect once more lifted their head, swaggering as if there was no such thing as a lie in the world. After all, what was my task but to do in units what for years Monsieur de Commines had schemed to do by thousands, in the transferring of whole principalities from one ruler to another?

As I pushed open the door of Monseigneur's private apartment and stood aside to allow him to precede me, Martin, standing within, caught sight of me. What a cry he gave! "Monsieur Gaspard! Oh, thank God! thank God!" It warmed my heart to hear him. Without ceremony he pushed past Monsieur de Commines and caught me by both hands; nor would Monseigneur listen to my apologies.

"Love is no respecter of persons," said he, clapping him on the shoulder. "I told you Master Martin had a heart in his breast, and so would make a bad courtier. All the same, I wish I had fifty such insolents about me. I would be safer than Louis in Plessis for all its walls and moats. That you will have Martin with you on your journey makes me easier in my mind."

Dropping my hands, Martin bowed humbly, angry with himself that his unceremonious impetuosity had, perhaps, lowered the dignity of his Monsieur Gaspard.

"Your pardon, Monseigneur, and yours, Monsieur Gaspard; I forgot myself. But when one has gone hungry for ten days——"

"That's a fine phrase of yours, my friend; say no more lest you spoil it."

"Then, Monseigneur, if I am permitted? You spoke of a journey—is it soon?"

"To-night."

"But not to Tours, Monseigneur, not to the Street——?"

"The Street of the House of the Great Nails! No, my friend, to the south."

"To the south to-night! God be praised for all His mercies! I'll go for the horses, Monsieur Gaspard."

"Yes," said de Commines, laughing at his haste, but a little bitterly, "go, go, for there is no time to be lost. It's a strange world, de Helville," he went on as the door closed. "Here we have the greatest names in the land, and every ambitious schemer in France intriguing to set foot in Plessis, and this honest heart thanking God unfeignedly that he rides away into the darkness,—he does not even ask where! But now to arrange for your journey. For the King's peace and your own, leave Plessis to-night, late as it is. You will just have time before the gates close, when none can pass. Halt at Ouzay for the night—it is the first of the King's posts, and put up at the sign of the Laughing Man. Say to the host as you enter, 'Is the good-man of Tours in the neighbourhood?' and having received his answer, say no more. Sup on the best and sleep softly, there will be no reckoning to pay. But in the morning a man, wearing a bunch of trefoil in his hat, will give you your next instructions. Follow these, but ask no questions. As you find it at Ouzay, so will it be straight through to Navarre. Everywhere you rest you will be expected, or, rather, not you, but the King's messenger, and everywhere you pass shot free."

"Then what is this for?" asked I, for while he was speaking he had filled a wallet with more gold coin than Solignac had ever seen in all my five-and-twenty years.

"For diplomacy," he answered laughing. "Where you cannot steal you must bribe. But there, I hear the horses in the courtyard, and since needs must when the King bids, the sooner you go south the sooner Solignac will give you a roof to your head. And who knows but the journey may find you a mistress for it! Brigitta? H'm, perhaps Brigitta, though I am no lover of swineherd wenches. Let me see the King's letter a moment."

I took it from the inner pocket where, half mechanically, I had placed it for safety, and handed it to Monsieur de Commines—an oblong envelope of crisp paper, a palm and a half in length by a palm wide, stout, substantial, close-fastened. He took it, and turned at once to the seal.

"My cypher and quarterings exactly, even to the flaw on the upper right hand corner of the collet; my shade of wax too, even to the perfume I commonly use. Men call me avaricious. It's a lie, de Helville; money is a good servant but the worst of masters. Yet I would give five hundred, yes a thousand livres to know what is written within, or even to see the writing. Who knows but it may seem my very own? If I do nothing by halves, neither does the King my master, though how he procured the signet I cannot imagine." With a sigh and a............