Thus he stayed alone in the chateau for a long, irksome three years.  Monsieur was not of a reflective mind, content to stand aside and watch while other men fought out great issues.  It was a weary procession of days to him.  His only son, a lad a few years older than I, shared none of his father’s scruples and refused point-blank to follow him into exile.  He remained in Paris, where they knew how to be gay in spite of sieges.  Therefore I, the Forester’s son, whom Monsieur took for a page, had a chance to come closer to my lord and be more to him than a mere servant, and I loved him as the dogs did.  Aye, and admired him for a fortitude almost more than human, in that he could hold himself passive here in farthest Picardie, whilst in Normandie and Ile de France battles raged and towns fell and captains won glory.

At length, in the opening of the year 1593, M. le Duc began to have a frequent visitor, a gentleman in no wise remarkable save for that he was accorded long interviews with Monsieur.  After these visits my lord was always in great spirits, putting on frisky airs, like a stallion when he is led out of the stable.  I looked for something to happen, and it was no surprise to me when M. le Duc announced one day, quite without warning, that he was done with St. Quentin and would be off in the morning for Mantes.  I was in the seventh heaven of joy when he added that he should take me with him.  I knew the King of Navarre was at Mantes—­at last we were going to make history!  There was no bound to my golden dreams, no limit to my future.

But my house of cards suffered a rude tumble, and by no hand but my father’s.  He came to Monsieur, and, presuming on an old servitor’s privilege, begged him to leave me at home.

“I have lost two sons in Monsieur’s service,” he said:  “Jean, hunting in this forest, and Blaise, in the fray at Blois.  I have never grudged them to Monsieur.  But Felix is all I have left.”

Thus it came about that I was left behind, hidden in the hay-loft, when my duke rode away.  I could not watch his going.

Though the days passed drearily, yet they passed.  Time does pass, at length, even when one is young.  It was July.  The King of Navarre had moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most folk thought he would never win the city, the hotbed of the League.  Of M. le Duc we heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller, putting up at the inn in the village, told a startling tale.  The Duke of St. Quentin, though known to have been at Mantes and strongly suspected of espousing Navarre’s cause, had ridden calmly into Paris and opened his hotel!  It was madness—­madness sheer and stark.  Thus far his religion had saved him, yet any day he might fall under the swords of the Leaguers.

My father came, after hearing this tale, to where I was lying on the grass, the warm summer night, thinking hard thoughts of him for keeping me at home and spoiling my chances in life.  He gave me straightway the whole of the story.  Long before it was over I had sprung to my feet.