“With all my heart.  And whither?”

“To Versailles.  The king will be on fire to know how we have fared.  You have the best right to tell him, since without you and your friend yonder it would have been but a sorry tale.”

“I will be there in two hours.”

“Have you horses?”

“Ours were slain.”

“You will find some in the stables here.  Pick the best, since you have lost your own in the king’s service.”

The advice was too good to be overlooked.  De Catinat, beckoning to Amos Green, hurried away with him to the stables, while De Brissac, with a few short sharp orders, disarmed the retainers, stationed his guardsmen all over the castle, and arranged for the removal of the lady, and for the custody of her husband.  An hour later the two friends were riding swiftly down the country road, inhaling the sweet air, which seemed the fresher for their late experience of the dank, foul vapours of their dungeon.  Far behind them a little dark pinnacle jutting over a grove of trees marked the chateau which they had left, while on the extreme horizon to the west there came a quick shimmer and sparkle where the level rays of the early sun gleamed upon the magnificent palace which was their goal.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FALL OF THE CATINATS.

Two days after Madame de Maintenon’s marriage to the king there was held within the humble walls of her little room a meeting which was destined to cause untold misery to many hundreds of thousands of people, and yet, in the wisdom of Providence, to be an instrument in carrying French arts and French ingenuity and French sprightliness among those heavier Teutonic peoples who have been the stronger and the better ever since for the leaven which they then received.  For in history great evils have sometimes arisen from a virtue, and most beneficent results have often followed hard upon a crime.

The time had come when the Church was to claim her promise from madame, and her pale cheek and sad eyes showed how vain it had been for her to try and drown the pleadings of her tender heart by the arguments of the bigots around her.  She knew the Huguenots of France.  Who could know them better, seeing that she was herself from their stock, and had been brought up in their faith?  She knew their patience, their nobility, their independence, their tenacity.  What chance was there that they would conform to the king’s wish?  A few great nobles might, but the others would laugh at the galleys, the jail, or even the gallows when the faith of their fathers was at stake.  If their creed were no longer tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in a chain-gang upon the roads.  It was a dreadful alternative to present to a people who were so numerous that they made a small nation in themselves.  And most dreadful of all, that she who was of their own blood should cast her voice against them.  And yet her promise had been given, and now the time had come when it must be redeemed.