De Vivonne, standing in his stirrups, craned his neck up towards the grating, so that the two men most interested could hear little of the conversation which followed.  They saw only that the horseman held a gold ring up in the air, and that the face above, which had begun by shaking and frowning, was now nodding and smiling.  An instant later the head disappeared, the door swung open upon screaming hinges, and the carriage drove on into the courtyard beyond, leaving the escort, with the exception of De Vivonne, outside.  As the horses pulled up, a knot of rough fellows clustered round, and the two prisoners were dragged roughly out.  In the light of the torches which flared around them they could see that they were hemmed in by high turreted walls upon every side.  A bulky man with a bearded face, the same whom they had seen at the grating, was standing in the centre of the group of armed men issuing his orders.

“To the upper dungeon, Simon!” he cried.  “And see that they have two bundles of straw and a loaf of bread until we learn our master’s will.”

“I know not who your master may be,” said De Catinat, “but I would ask you by what warrant he dares to stop two messengers of the king while travelling in his service?”

“By St. Denis, if my master play the king a trick, it will be but tie and tie,” the stout man answered, with a grin.  “But no more talk!  Away with them, Simon, and you answer to me for their safe-keeping.”

It was in vain that De Catinat raved and threatened, invoking the most terrible menaces upon all who were concerned in detaining him.  Two stout knaves thrusting him from behind and one dragging in front forced him through a narrow gate and along a stone-flagged passage, a small man in black buckram with a bunch of keys in one hand and a swinging lantern in the other leading the way.  Their ankles had been so tied that they could but take steps of a foot in length.  Shuffling along, they made their way down three successive corridors and through three doors, each of which was locked and barred behind them.  Then they ascended a winding stone stair, hollowed out in the centre by the feet of generations of prisoners and of jailers, and finally they were thrust into a small square dungeon, and two trusses of straw were thrown in after them.  An instant later a heavy key turned in the lock, and they were left to their own meditations.

Very grim and dark those meditations were in the case of De Catinat.  A stroke of good luck had made him at court, and now this other of ill fortune had destroyed him.  It would be in vain that he should plead his own powerlessness.  He knew his royal master well.  He was a man who was munificent when his orders were obeyed, and inexorable when they miscarried.  No excuse availed with him.  An unlucky man was as abhorrent to him as a negligent one.  In this great crisis the king had trusted him with an all-important message, and that message