Presently came a servant to say that my bed was spread in M. le Comte’s room, and up-stairs ran I with an utterly happy heart, for I saw by this token that I was forgiven.  Indeed, no sooner had I got fairly inside the door than my master raised himself on his sound elbow and called out: 

“Ah, Felix, do you bear me malice for an ungrateful churl?”

“I bear malice?” I cried, flushing.  “Monsieur is mocking me.  I know monsieur cannot love me, since I attempted his life.  Yet my wish is to be allowed to serve him so faithfully that he can forget it.”

“Nay,” he said; “I have forgotten it.  And it was freely forgiven from the moment I saw Lucas at my cousin’s side.”

“For the second time,” I said, “monsieur saved my life.”  And I dropped on my knees beside the bed to kiss his hand.  But he snatched it away from me and flung his arm around my neck and kissed my cheek.

“Felix,” he cried, “but for you my hands would be red with my father’s blood.  You rescued him from death and me from worse.  If I have any shreds of honour left ’tis you have saved them to me.”

“Monsieur,” I stammered, “I did naught.  I am your servant till I die.”

“You deserve a better master.  What am I?  Lucas’s puppet!  Lucas’s fool!”

“Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone.  It was a plot.  You know what he said—­”

“Aye,” he cried with bitter vehemence.  “I shall remember for some time what he said.  They would not kill me to make my cousin Valere duke!  He was a man.  But I—­nom de dieu, I was not worth the killing.”

“It is the League’s scheming, monsieur.”

“Oh, that does not need the saying.  Secretaries don’t plot against dukedoms on their own account.  Some high man is behind Lucas—­I dare swear his Grace of Mayenne himself.  It is no secret now where Monsieur stands.  Yet the king’s party grows so strong and the mob so cheers Monsieur, the League dare not strike openly.  So they put a spy in the house to choose time and way.  And the spy would not stab, for he saw he could make me do his work for him.  He saw I needed but a push to come to open breach with my father.  He gave the push.  Oh, he could make me pull his chestnuts from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I could never strike a free blow again.  I was to be their slave, their thrall forever!”

“Never that, monsieur; never that!”

“I am not so sure,” he cried.  “Had it not been for the advent of a stray boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose through.  I was blindfolded; I saw nothing.  I knew my cousin Gervais to be morose and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always stood his friend.  I thought him shamefully used; I let myself be turned out of my father’s house to champion him.  I had no more notion he was plotting my ruin than a child playing with his dolls.  I was their doll, mordieu! their toy, their crazy fool on a chain.  But life is not over yet.  To-morrow I go to pledge my sword to Henry of Navarre.”