“There was naught further,” I said, shuddering.  “I saw them for the space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you.  The next minute the shutters were closed again.”

“’Tis a marvel,” he answered gravely.  “But I know what has disturbed them in their graves, the heretics!  It is that they have lost their leader.”

I stared at him blankly, and he added: 

“Their Henry of Navarre.”

“But he is not lost.  There has been no battle.”

“Lost to them,” said Maitre Jacques, “when he turns Catholic.”

“Oh!” I cried.

“Oh!” he mocked.  “You come from the country; you don’t know these things.”

“But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!”

“Bah!  Time bends the stiffest neck.  Tell me this:  for what do the learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?”

“Oh,” said I, bewildered, “you tell me news, Maitre Jacques.”

“If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out, spit me on my own jack,” he answered, eying me rather keenly as he added: 

“It should be welcome news to you.”

Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur’s change of base.  Yet it was my duty to be discreet.

“I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith,” I said.

“Pshaw!” he cried.  “To the devil with pretences!  ’Tis an open secret that your patron has gone over to Navarre.”

“I know naught of it.”

“Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then.  If when he came to Paris M. de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his parleyings, he was a fool.”

“His parleyings?” I echoed feebly.

“Aye, the boy in the street knows he has been with Navarre.  For, mark you, all France has been wondering these many months where St. Quentin was coming out.  His movements do not go unnoted like a yokel’s.  But, i’ faith, he is not dull; he understands that well enough.  Nay, ’tis my belief he came into the city in pure effrontery to show them how much he dared.  He is a bold blade, your duke.  And, mon dieu! it had its effect.  For the Leaguers have been so agape with astonishment ever since that they have not raised a finger against him.”

“Yet you do not think him safe?”

“Safe, say you?  Safe!  Pardieu! if you walked into a cage of lions, and they did not in the first instant eat you, would you therefore feel safe?  He was stark mad to come to Paris.  There is no man the League hates more, now they know they have lost him, and no man they can afford so ill to spare to King Henry.  A great Catholic noble, he would be meat and drink to the Bearnais.  He was mad to come here.”

“And yet nothing has happened to him.”

“Verily, fortune favours the brave.  No, nothing has happened—­yet.  But I tell you true, Felix, I had rather be the poor innkeeper of the Amour de Dieu than stand in M. de St. Quentin’s shoes.”