He regarded me with a thoughtful, censorious eye.

“And you rolling to bed and shouting like chanticleer, ’Sing cucu, sing cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling falsetto.  Without doubt I had bawled the nonsense out on my way to bed.

“You have a good memory,” I commented drily, as I essayed a moment to drape my shoulders with the new sable cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to put aside.  He shook his head sourly.

“No need of memory when you roared it over and over for the thousandth time till half the inn was a-knock at the door to spit you for the sleep-killer you were.  And when I had you decently in the bed, did you not call me to you and command, if the devil called, to tell him my lady slept?  And did you not call me back again, and, with a grip on my arm that leaves it bruised and black this day, command me, as I loved life, fat meat, and the warm fire, to call you not of the morning save for one thing?”

“Which was?” I prompted, unable for the life of me to guess what I could have said.

“Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by name Martinelli—­whoever he may be—­for the heart of Martinelli smoking on a gold platter.  The platter must be gold, you said; and you said I must call you by singing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’  Whereat you began to teach me how to sing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

And when Pons had said the name, I knew it at once for the priest, Martinelli, who had been knocking his heels two mortal hours in the room without.

When Martinelli was permitted to enter and as he saluted me by title and name, I knew at once my name and all of it.  I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure. (You see, only could I know then, and remember afterward, what was in my conscious mind.)

The priest was Italian, dark and small, lean as with fasting or with a wasting hunger not of this world, and his hands were as small and slender as a woman’s.  But his eyes!  They were cunning and trustless, narrow-slitted and heavy-lidded, at one and the same time as sharp as a ferret’s and as indolent as a basking lizard’s.

“There has been much delay, Count de Sainte-Maure,” he began promptly, when Pons had left the room at a glance from me.  “He whom I serve grows impatient.”

“Change your tune, priest,” I broke in angrily.  “Remember, you are not now in Rome.”

“My august master—­” he began.

“Rules augustly in Rome, mayhap,” I again interrupted.  “This is France.”

Martinelli shrugged his shoulders meekly and patiently, but his eyes, gleaming like a basilisk’s, gave his shoulders the lie.

“My august master has some concern with the doings of France,” he said quietly.  “The lady is not for you.  My master has other plans. . .”  He moistened his thin lips with his tongue.  “Other plans for the lady . . . and for you.”