“Michel,” I said at last, addressing the doyen of my secretaries, who chanced to be a Provencal, “have you ever seen a boxwood fire?”

He replied respectfully, but with some show of surprise, that he had not, adding that that wood was rendered so valuable to the turner by its hardness that few people would be extravagant enough to use it for fuel.  I assented, and felt the more certain that the Jesuit’s remark contained a hidden meaning.  The only other clue I had consisted in the apparent mistake the father had made as to the king’s residence, and this might have been dropped from him in pure inadvertence.  Yet I was inclined to think it intentional, and construed it as implying that the matter concerned the king personally.  Which the more alarmed me.

I passed the day in great anxiety, but toward evening, acting on a sudden inspiration, I sent La Trape, my valet, a trusty fellow who had saved my life at Cahors, to the Three Pigeons, a large inn in the suburbs, at which such travellers from North to South as did not wish to enter the city were accustomed to change horses and sometimes to sleep.  Acquitting himself of the commission I had given him with his usual adroitness, he quickly returned with the news that a traveller of rank had passed through three days before, having sent in advance to order relays there and at Essonnes.  La Trape reported that the gentleman had remained in his coach, and that none of the inn servants had seen his face.

“And he had companions?” I said.  My mind had not failed already to conceive a natural suspicion.

“Only one, your Grace.  The rest were servants.”

“And that one?”

“A man in the yard fancied that he recognised M. de la Varenne.”

“Ah!” I said no more.  My agitation was indeed such that, before giving reins to it, I bade La Trape withdraw.  I could scarcely believe that, perfectly acquainted as the king was with the plots which Spain and the Catholics were daily weaving for his life, and possessing such unavowed but powerful enemies among the great lords as Tremouille and Bouillon, to say nothing of Mademoiselle d’Entragues’s half-brother, the Count of Auvergne—­I could hardly believe that with this knowledge his Majesty had been so foolhardy as to travel without guards or attendance to Fontainebleau.  And yet I now felt an absolute certainty that this was the case.  The presence of La Varenne also, the confidant of his intrigues, informed me of the cause of this wild journey, convincing me that his Majesty had given way to the sole weakness of his nature, and was bent on one of those adventures of gallantry which had been more becoming in the Prince of Bearn than in the king of France.  Neither was I at a loss to guess the object of his pursuit.  It had been lately whispered in the court that the king had seen and fallen in love with his mistress’s younger sister, Susette d’Entragues, whose home at Malesherbes lay but three leagues from Fontainebleau, on the edge of the forest.  This placed the king’s imprudence in a stronger light, for he had scarcely in France a more dangerous enemy than her brother Auvergne; nor had the immense sums which he had settled on the elder sister satisfied the mean avarice or conciliated the brutish hostility of her father.