“By what road, sire?”

“I have commonly hunted in the morning and visited Malesherbes at midday.  I have returned as a rule by the bridle-path, which crosses the Rock of the Serpents.”

“Patience, sir, one moment,” I said.  “Does that path run anywhere through a plantation of box?”

“To be sure,” he answered, without hesitation.  “About half a mile on this side of the rock it skirts Madame Catherine’s maze.”

Thereon I told the king without reserve all that had happened.  He listened with the air of apparent carelessness which he always assumed when the many plots against his life were under discussion; but at the end he embraced me again and again with tears in his eyes.

“France is beholden to you,” he said.  “I have never had, nor shall have, such another servant as you, Rosny!  The three ruffians at the inn,” he continued, “are the tools, of course, and the hound has been in the habit of accompanying them to the spot.  Yesterday, I remember, I walked by that place with the bridle on my arm.”

“By a special providence, sire,” I said, gravely.

“It is true,” he answered, crossing himself, a thing I had never yet known him to do in private.  “But now, who is the craftsman who has contrived this pretty plot?  Tell me that, grand master.”

On this point, however, though I had my suspicions, I begged leave to be excused speaking until I had slept upon it.  “Heaven forbid,” I said, “that I should expose any man to your Majesty’s resentment without cause.  The wrath of kings is the forerunner of death.”

“I have not heard,” the king answered, drily, “that the Duke of Bouillon has called in a leech yet.”

Before retiring I learned that his Majesty had with him a score of light horse, whom La Varenne had requisitioned from Melun, and that some of these had each day awaited him at Malesherbes, and returned with him.  Further, that Henry had been in the habit of wearing, when riding back in the evening, a purple cloak over his hunting-suit; a fact well known, I felt sure, to the assassins, who, unseen and in perfect safety, could fire at the exact moment when the cloak obscured the feather, and could then make their escape, secured by the stout wall of box, from immediate pursuit.

I was aroused in the morning by La Varenne coming to my bedside and bidding me hasten to the king.  I did so, and found his Majesty already in his boots and walking on the terrace with Coquet, his master of the household, Vitry, La Varenne, and a gentleman unknown to me.  On seeing me he dismissed them, and, while I was still a great way off, called out, chiding me for my laziness; then taking me by the hand in the most obliging manner, he made me walk up and down with him, while he told me what further thoughts he had of this affair; and, hiding nothing from me, even as he bade me speak to him whatever I thought without reserve, he required to know whether I suspected that the Entragues family were cognizant of this.