On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M. Etienne, treating him with a calm assumption of friendliness that would have maddened a saint.  Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young lord, as we all did.  He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.

M. Etienne argued no more.  He was wroth and sore over Vigo’s attitude, but he said little.  He accepted the advance of money—­“Of course Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours,” Vigo explained—­and despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.

I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth.  We had accomplished nothing by our return to the hotel.  Nay, rather had we lost, for we were both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our ambitions.  I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir.  It was all very well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not his station, for Vigo never disobeyed him, but stood by him in all things.  But I imagined that, were M. Etienne master, Vigo, for all his years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.

I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Etienne did purpose to rescue mademoiselle.  His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air.  I could only hope he had more in his mind than he had let me know.  It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hotel de Lorraine hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a letter to mademoiselle.  But he would not send me.

“No,” he had said, “it won’t do.  Think of something better, Felix.”

But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois Lanternes.

The city wore a sleepy afternoon look.  It was very hot, and few cared to be stirring.  I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone’s throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L’Oie d’Or.  It aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city.  As my master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris.  I readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed.  He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.

I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out.  I was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps.  The street was so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter off.  The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I was too old for that game.  I reflected that I was charged with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys might come to Mayenne.  I went on into the Three Lanterns.