THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.

[Illustration]

I

A flash of lightning.

At the stair-foot the landlord stopped me.  “Here, lad, take a candle.  The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would not have you break your neck.”

“And give the house a bad name,” I said.

“No fear of that; my house has a good name.  There is no fairer inn in all Paris.  And your chamber is a good chamber, though you will have larger, doubtless, when you are Minister of Finance.”

This raised a laugh among the tavern idlers, for I had been bragging a bit of my prospects.  I retorted: 

“When I am, Maitre Jacques, look out for a rise in your taxes.”

The laugh was turned on mine host, and I retired with the honours of that encounter.  And though the stairs were the steepest I ever climbed, I had the breath and the spirit to whistle all the way up.  What mattered it that already I ached in every bone, that the stair was long and my bed but a heap of straw in the garret of a mean inn in a poor quarter?  I was in Paris, the city of my dreams!

I am a Broux of St. Quentin.  The great world has never heard of the Broux?  No matter; they have existed these hundreds of years, Masters of the Forest, and faithful servants of the dukes of St. Quentin.  The great world has heard of the St. Quentins?  I warrant you!  As loudly as it has of Sully and Villeroi, Tremouille and Biron.  That is enough for the Broux.

I was brought up to worship the saints and M. le Duc, and I loved and revered them alike, by faith, for M. le Duc, at court, seemed as far away from us as the saints in heaven.  But the year after King Henry III was murdered, Monsieur came to live on his estate, to make high and low love him for himself.

In that bloody time, when the King of Navarre and the two Leagues were tearing our poor France asunder, M. le Duc found himself between the devil and the deep sea.  He was no friend to the League; for years he had stood between the king, his master, and the machinations of the Guises.  On the other hand, he was no friend to the Huguenots.  “To seat a heretic on the throne of France were to deny God,” he said.  Therefore he came home to St. Quentin, where he abode in quiet for some three years, to the great wonderment of all the world.

Had he been a cautious man, a man who looked a long way ahead, his compeers would have understood readily enough that he was waiting to see how the cat would jump, taking no part in the quarrel lest he should mix with the losing side.  But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur’s character that not even his worst detractor could accept it.  For he was known to all as a hotspur—­a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost.  Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer.  The puzzle was too deep for them.  Yet it was only this:  to Monsieur, honour was more than a pretty word.  If he could not find his cause honest, he would not draw his sword, though all the curs in the land called him coward.