“Ah, Monsieur, I have often asked myself of late what I was born for.  Now I know it was for this morning.”

“For this and many more mornings, Etienne,” Monsieur made gay answer, laying a hand on his son’s shoulder.  “Courage, comrade.  We’ll have our lady yet.”

He smiled at him hearteningly and turned away to his writing-table.  For all his sympathy, he was, as was natural, more interested in his papers than in Mlle. de Montluc.

“I’ll get this off my hands at once,” he went on, with the effect of talking to himself rather than to us.  “It shall go straight off to Lemaitre.  You’d better go to bed, both of you.  My faith, you’ve made a night of it!”

“Won’t you take me for your messenger, Monsieur?  You need a trusty one.”

“A kindly offer, Etienne.  But you have earned your rest.  And you, true as you are, are yet not the only staunch servant I have, God be thanked.  Gilles will take this straight from my hand to Lemaitre’s.”

He had inclosed the packet in a clean wrapper, but now, a thought striking him, he took it out again.

“I’d best break off the royal seal, lest it be spied among the president’s papers.  I’ll scratch out my initial, too.  The cipher tells nothing.”

“He is not likely to leave it about, Monsieur.”

“No, but this time we’ll provide for every chance.  We’ll take all the precautions ingenuity can devise or patience execute.”

He crushed the seal in his fingers, and took the knife-point to scrape the wax away.  It slipped and severed the cords.  Of its own accord the stiff paper of the flap unfolded.

“The cipher seems as determined to show itself to me again as if I were in danger of forgetting it,” Monsieur said idly.  “The truth is—­”

He stopped in the middle of a word, snatching up the packet, slapping it wide open, tearing it sheet from sheet.  Each was absolutely blank!

XXIV

The Florentines.

M. Etienne, forgetting his manners, snatched the papers from his father’s hand, turning them about and about, not able to believe his senses.  A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one moment from flowery lawns into a turbulent sea, might feel as he did.

“But the seal!” he stammered.

“The seal was genuine,” Monsieur answered, startled as he.  “How your fellow could have the king’s signet—­”

“See,” M. Etienne cried, scratching at the fragments.  “This is it.  Dunce that I am not to have guessed it!  Look, there is a layer of paper embedded in the wax.  Look, he cut the seal out, smeared hot wax on the false packet, pressed in the seal, and curled the new wax over the edge.  It was cleverly done; the seal is but little thicker, little larger than before.  It did not look tampered with.  Would you have suspected it, Monsieur?” he demanded piteously.

“I had no thought of it.  But this Peyrot—­it may not yet be too late—­”