Apprised of all this, I saw that Father Cotton had desired to communicate it to me.  But his motive I found it less easy to divine.  It might have been a wish to balk this new passion through my interference, and at the same time to expose me to the risk of his Majesty’s anger.  Or it might simply have been a desire to avert danger from the king’s person.  At any rate, constant to my rule of ever preferring my master’s interest to his favour, I sent for Maignan, my equerry, and bade him have an equipage ready at dawn.

Accordingly at that hour next morning, attended only by La Trape, with a groom, a page, and four Swiss, I started, giving out that I was bound for Sully to inspect that demesne, which had formerly been the property of my family, and of which the refusal had just been offered to me.  Under cover of this destination I was enabled to reach La Ferte Alais unsuspected.  There, pretending that the motion of the coach fatigued me, I mounted the led horse, without which I never travelled, and bidding La Trape accompany me, gave orders to the others to follow at their leisure to Pethiviers, where I proposed to stay the night.

La Ferte Alais, on the borders of the forest, is some five leagues westward of Fontainebleau, and as far north of Malesherbes, with which last it is connected by a highroad.  Having disclosed my intentions to La Trape, however, I presently left this road and struck into a path which promised to conduct us in the right direction.  But the denseness of the undergrowth, and the huge piles of gray rocks which lie everywhere strewn about the forest, made it difficult to keep for any time in a straight line.  After being two hours in the saddle we concluded that we had lost our way, and were confirmed in this on reaching a clearing, and seeing before us a small inn, which La Trape recognised as standing about a league and a half on the forest side of Malesherbes.

We still had ample time to reach Fontainebleau by nightfall, but before proceeding it was absolutely necessary that our horses should have rest.  Dismounting, therefore, I bade La Trape see the sorrel well baited.  Observing that the inn was a poor place, and no one coming to wait upon me, I entered it of my own motion, and found myself at once in a large room better furnished with company than accommodation.  Three men, who had the appearance of such reckless swaggering blades as are generally to be found drinking in the inns on the outskirts of Paris, and who come not unfrequently to their ends at Montfaucon, were tippling and playing cards at a table near the door.  They looked up sullenly at my entrance, but refrained from saluting me, which, as I was plainly dressed and much stained by travel, was in some degree pardonable.  By the fire, partaking of a coarse meal, was a fourth man of so singular an appearance that I must needs describe him.  He was of great height and extreme leanness.  His face matched his form, for it was long and thin,