“I will send the message,” said the lady.

“You, countess?” said the marquis, raising his eyebrows.  “Your devotion is great, we know, but—­”

“Listen!” exclaimed the lady, rising and resting her hands upon the table; “in a garret of this house lives a youth from the provinces as guileless and tender as the lambs he tended there.  I have met him twice or thrice upon the stairs.  I questioned him, fearing that he might dwell too near the room in which we are accustomed to meet.  He is mine, if I will.  He writes poems in his garret, and I think he dreams of me.  He will do what I say.  He shall take the message to the palace.”

The marquis rose from his chair and bowed.  “You did not permit me to finish my sentence, countess,” he said.  “I would have said:  ’Your devotion is great, but your wit and charm are infinitely greater.’”

While the conspirators were thus engaged, David was polishing some lines addressed to his amorette d’escalier.  He heard a timorous knock at his door, and opened it, with a great throb, to behold her there, panting as one in straits, with eyes wide open and artless, like a child’s.

“Monsieur,” she breathed, “I come to you in distress.  I believe you to be good and true, and I know of no other help.  How I flew through the streets among the swaggering men!  Monsieur, my mother is dying.  My uncle is a captain of guards in the palace of the king.  Some one must fly to bring him.  May I hope—­”

“Mademoiselle,” interrupted David, his eyes shining with the desire to do her service, “your hopes shall be my wings.  Tell me how I may reach him.”

The lady thrust a sealed paper into his hand.

“Go to the south gate—­the south gate, mind—­and say to the guards there, ‘The falcon has left his nest.’  They will pass you, and you will go to the south entrance to the palace.  Repeat the words, and give this letter to the man who will reply ’Let him strike when he will.’  This is the password, monsieur, entrusted to me by my uncle, for now when the country is disturbed and men plot against the king’s life, no one without it can gain entrance to the palace grounds after nightfall.  If you will, monsieur, take him this letter so that my mother may see him before she closes her eyes.”

“Give it me,” said David, eagerly.  “But shall I let you return home through the streets alone so late?  I—­”

“No, no—­fly.  Each moment is like a precious jewel.  Some time,” said the lady, with eyes long and cozening, like a gypsy’s, “I will try to thank you for your goodness.”

The poet thrust the letter into his breast, and bounded down the stairway.  The lady, when he was gone, returned to the room below.

The eloquent eyebrows of the marquis interrogated her.

“He is gone,” she said, “as fleet and stupid as one of his own sheep, to deliver it.”

The table shook again from the batter of Captain Desrolles’s fist.