“Hurrah, Chevalier!” he cried; “the bowl will soon be empty.”

“The Vicomte d’Halluys?” murmured Victor.  “Paul, there is another gentleman bound for Spain.  We shall have company.”

“What?  The astute vicomte, that diplomat?”

“Even so.  The Vicomte d’Halluys, wit, duelist, devil-may-care, spendthrift.  Ho, Vicomte!” the poet called.

“Saumaise?” cried the man at the door, coming forward.

“Go in, Paul,” said the poet; “I want a word with him.”

The Chevalier passed into the private assembly.  The vicomte and the poet looked into each other’s eyes for a moment.  The vicomte slapped his thigh and laughed.

“Hang me from a gargoyle on Notre Dame,” he broke forth, “if it isn’t the poet!”

“The same,” less hilariously.

“I thought you had gone to Holland?”

“I can talk Spanish,” replied Victor, “but not a word of Dutch.  And you?  Is it Spain?”

“Nay; when the time comes I’m for New France.  I have some property there; a fine excuse to see it.  What a joke!  How well it will read in Monsieur Somebody’s memoirs!  What is new?”

“Mazarin has not yet come into possession of that paper.  Beaufort will see to that, so far as it lies in his power.  I am all at sea.”

“And I soon shall be!  Come on, then.  We are making a night of it.”  And the vicomte caught the poet by the arm and dragged him into the private assembly.

Around a huge silver bowl sat a company of roisterers, all flushed with wine and the attendant false happiness.  Long clay pipes clouded the candle-light; there was the jingle of gold and the purr of shuffling cards; and here and there were some given to the voicing of ribald songs.  To Victor this was no uncommon scene; and it was not long before he had thrown himself with gay enthusiasm into this mad carouse.

Shortly after the door had closed upon the company of merry-makers and their loud voices had resolved into untranslatable murmurs, three men came into the public room and ranged themselves in front of the fire.  The close fitting, long black cassocks, the wide-brimmed hats looped up at the sides, proclaimed two of them to belong to the Society of Jesus.  The third, his body clothed in nondescript skins and furs, his feet in beaded moccasins, his head hatless and the coarse black hair adorned with a solitary feather from a heron’s wing and glistening with melting snow, the color of his skin unburnished copper, his eyes black, fierce, restless,—­all these marked the savage of the New World.  Potboys, grooms, and guests all craned their necks to get a glimpse of this strange and formidable being of whom they had heard such stories as curdled the blood and filled the night with troubled dreams.  A crowd gathered about, whispering and nodding and pointing.  The Iroquois beheld all this commotion with indifference not unmixed with contempt.  When he saw Du Puys