Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring.  They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning.  Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness.  At length, with the knack I have, whatever my stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the courtyard of the Trois Lanternes.  The big wooden doors were indeed shut, but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and cross as a bear, opened to me.  I vouchsafed him scant apology, but, dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway into dreamless slumber.

When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for dinner.  Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler.

“Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed.”

“Oh, I am obliged to you,” I said, rubbing my eyes.  “I must go up to M. le Comte.”

“He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be disturbed.  But that was last week.  Dame! you slept like a sabot.”

It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the trough, and present myself before monsieur.  He was dressed and sitting at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.

“You are out of bed, monsieur,” I cried.

“But yes,” he answered, springing up, “I am as well as ever I was.  Felix, what has happened to you?”

[Illustration:  “SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE FED.”]

I glanced at the serving-man; M. Etienne ordered him at once from the room.

“Now tell me quickly,” he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very richness of matter.  “Mademoiselle?”

“Ah, mademoiselle!” I exclaimed.  “Mademoiselle is—­” I paused in a dearth of words worthy of her.

“She is, she is!” he agreed, laughing.  “Oh, go on, you little slow-poke!  You saw her?  And she said—­”

He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.

“I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things,” I told him.  “And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you.”

“She does!” he cried, flushing.  “Felix, does she?  You cannot know.”

“But I do know it,” I answered, not very lucidly.  “You see, she wouldn’t have wept so much, just over me.”

“Did she weep?  Lorance?” he exclaimed.

“They flogged me,” I said.  “They didn’t hurt me much.  But she came down in the night with a candle and cried over me.”

“And what said she?  Now I am sorry they beat you.  Who did that?  Mayenne?  What said she, Felix?”