He had been at it three years, too.  For three long years this girl’s fair face had stood between him and his home, between him and action, between him and happiness.  It was a fair face, truly; yet, in my opinion, neither it nor any maid’s was worth such pains.  If she had loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl spurned and flouted him.  Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not put the jade out of his mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the road to glory?  When I got back to him and told him how she had mocked him, hang me but he should, though!

Ah, but when was I to get back to him?  That rested not with me but with my dangerous host, the League’s Lieutenant-General, dark-minded Mayenne.  What he wanted with me he had not revealed; nor was it a pleasant subject for speculation.  He meant me, of course, to tell him all I knew of the St. Quentins; well, that was soon done; belike he understood more than I of the day’s work.  But after he had questioned me, what?

Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never done him any harm?  Or would he—­I wondered, if they flung me out stark into some alley’s gutter, whether M. le Comte would search for me and claim my carcass?  Or would he, too, have fallen by the blades of the League?

I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness.  Never, not even this morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been in such mortal dread.  I had walked out of that closet to find M. Etienne; but I was not likely to happen on succour here.  Pierre, for all his kind heart, could not save me from the Duke of Mayenne.

Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with me in the little room.  I groped my way to Our Lady’s feet and prayed her to save me, and if she might not, then to stand by me during the hard moment of dying and receive my seeking soul.  Comforted now and deeming I could pass, if it came to that, with a steady face, I laid me down, my head on the prie-dieu cushion, and presently went to sleep.

I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up to meet my doom.  But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings who bent over me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.

“Oh, my boy, my poor boy!” she cried pitifully, “I could not save you the flogging; on my honour, I could not.  It would have availed you nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees.”

With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over her lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame.  I stared, too confused for speech, while she, putting down the shaking candlestick on the altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face with her hands, sobbing.

“Mademoiselle,” I stammered, “it is not worth mademoiselle’s tears!  The man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think he was half flaying me.  But in truth he did not strike very hard.  He did not hurt so much.”