He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.

“Now what brings you back?”

“This, maitre,” said I, drawing him into a corner.  “M. le Comte has been in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined.  His arch-enemy gave us the slip.  And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at large.  He has the devil’s own cunning and malice; he might track him here to the Three Lanterns.  Therefore, maitre, I beg you to admit no one to M. le Comte—­no one on any business whatsoever.  Not if he comes from the Duke of Mayenne himself.”

“I won’t admit the Sixteen themselves,” the maitre declared.

“There is one man you may admit,” I conceded.  “Vigo, M. de St. Quentin’s equery.  You will know him for the biggest man in France.”

“Good.  And this other; what is he like?”

“He is young,” I said, “not above four or five and twenty.  Tall and slim,—­oh, without doubt, a gentleman.  He has light-brown hair and thin, aquiline face.  His tongue is unbound, too.”

“His tongue shall not get around me,” Maitre Menard promised.  “The host of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday let me tell you.”

With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my expedition with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the business.  It was all very well for M. Etienne to declare grandly that as recompense for my trouble I should see Mlle. de Montluc.  But I was not her lover and I thought I could get along very comfortably without seeing her.  I knew not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman.  When I had dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was scared.

And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause.  I was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne’s cousin.  What mocking devil had driven Etienne de Mar, out of a whole France full of lovely women, to fix his unturnable desire on this Ligueuse of Mayenne’s own brood?  Had his father’s friends no daughters, that he must seek a mistress from the black duke’s household?  Were there no families of clean hands and honest speech, that he must ally himself with the treacherous blood of Lorraine?

I had seen a sample of the League’s work to-day, and I liked it not.  If Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas’s backer, I marvelled that my master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that he cared to send his servant there.  Yet I went none the less readily for that; I was here to do his bidding.  Nor was I greatly alarmed for my own skin; I thought myself too small to be worth my Lord Mayenne’s powder.  And I had, I do confess, a lively curiosity to behold the interior of the greatest house in Paris, the very core and centre of the League.  Belike if it had not been for terror of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully enough.