“Sir,” said D’Aubigne eagerly, “it is true, then, that the Sprit of God worketh and dwelleth in you still?  You sigh unto God because of the absence of your friends and faithful servants; and all the while they are together, sighing because of yours and laboring for your freedom.  But you have only tears in your eyes, and they, arms in hand, are fighting your enemies.  As for us two, we were talking of taking to flight tomorrow, when your voice made us draw the curtain.  Bethink you, sir, that, after us, the hands that will serve you would not dare refuse to employ poison and the knife.”  Henry, much moved, resolved to follow the example of the Duke of Anjou.  His departure was fixed for the 3d of February, 1576.  He went and slept at Senlis; hunted next day very early, and, on his return from hunting, finding his horses baited and ready, “What news?” he asked.  “Sir,” said D’Aubigne, “we are betrayed; the king knows all; the road to death and shame is Paris; that to life and glory is anywhere else.”  “That is more than enough; away!” replied Henry.  They rode all night, and arrived without misadventure at Alencon.  Two hundred and fifty gentlemen, having been apprised in time, went thither to join the King of Navarre.  He pursued his road in their company.  From Senlis to the Loire he was silent but when he had crossed the river, “Praised be God, who has delivered me!” he cried; “at Paris they were the death of my mother; there they killed the admiral and my best servants; and they had no mind to do any better by me, if God had not had me in his keeping.  I return thither no more unless I am dragged.  I regret only two things that I have left behind at Paris—­mass and my wife.  As for mass, I will try to do without it; but as for my wife, I cannot; I mean to see her again.”  He disavowed the appearances of Catholicism he had assumed, again made open profession of Protestantism by holding at the baptismal font, in the conventicle, the daughter of a physician amongst his friends.  Then he reached Bearn, declaring that he meant to remain there independent and free.  A few days before his departure he had written to one of his Bearnese friends, “The court is the strangest you ever saw.  We are almost always ready to cut one another’s throats.  We wear daggers, shirts of mail, and very often the whole cuirass under the cape.  I am only waiting for the opportunity to deliver a little battle, for they tell me they will kill me, and I want to be beforehand.”  Mesdames de Carnavalet and de Sauve, two of his fair friends, had warned him that, far from giving him the lieutenant-generalship, which had been so often promised him, it had been decided to confer this office on the king’s brother, in order to get him back to court and seize his person as soon as he arrived.