“Would our kind be carrying a passport from the Duke of Mayenne?” quoth Gilles.

“It seems improbable,” the officer smiled, pleased with his wit.  “Sorry to discommode you, my dear.  But perhaps, lacking a passport, you can yet oblige me with the countersign, which does as well.  Just one little word, now, and I’ll let you through.”

[Illustration:  “IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY.”]

“If monsieur will tell me the little word?” she asked innocently.

He burst into laughter.

“No, no; I am not to be caught so easy as that, my girl.”

“Oh, come, monsieur captain,” Gilles urged, “many and many a fellow goes in and out of Paris without a passport.  The rules are a net to stop big fish and let the small fry go.  What harm will it do to my Lord Mayenne, or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness to let three poor servants through to their dying mother?”

“It desolates me to hear of her extremity,” the captain answered, with a fine irony, “but I am here to do my duty.  I am thinking, my dear, that you are some great lady’s maid?”

He was eying her sharply, suspiciously; she made haste to protest: 

“Oh, no, monsieur; I am servant to Mme. Mesnier, the grocer’s wife.”

“And perhaps you serve in the shop?”

“No, monsieur,” she said, not seeing his drift, but on guard against a trap.  “No, monsieur; I am never in the shop.  I am far too busy with my work.  Monsieur does not seem to understand what a servant-lass has to do.”

For answer, he took her hand and lifted it to the light, revealing all its smooth whiteness, its dainty, polished nails.

“I think mademoiselle does not understand it, either.”

With a little cry, she snatched her hand from him, hiding it in the folds of her kirtle, regarding him with open terror.  He softened somewhat at sight of her distress.

“Well, it’s none of my business if a lady chooses to be masquerading round the streets at night with a porter and a lackey.  I don’t know what your purpose is—­I don’t ask to know.  But I’m here to keep my gate, and I’ll keep it.  Go try to wheedle the officer at the Porte Neuve.”

In helpless obedience, glad of even so much leniency, we turned away—­to face a tall, grizzled veteran in a colonel’s shoulder-straps.  With a dragoon at his back, he had come so softly out of a side alley that not even the captain had marked him.

“What’s this, Guilbert?” he demanded.

“Some folks seeking to get through the gates, sir.  I’ve just turned them away.”

“What were you saying about the Porte Neuve?”

“I said they could go see how that gate is kept.  I showed them how this is.”

“Why must you pass through at this time of night?” said the commanding officer, civilly.  Gilles once again bemoaned the dying mother.  The young captain, eager to prove his fidelity, interrupted him: