_"I'll win my lady!"_
Lucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For
when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw
was the morning sun.
My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter
day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it
was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy
house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as
joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten
in some dark corner of the Hôtel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts
when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am
afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man
or any thing.
Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have
been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They
liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning.
Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk
servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city,
quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in
the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my
stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the
courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut,
but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and
cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but,
dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway
into dreamless slumber.
When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his
zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for
dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the
pitchfork of a hostler.
"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."
"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go up to M.
le Comte."
"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be
disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot."
It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the
trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting
at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.
"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.
"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I was.
Félix, what has happened to you?"
[Illustration: "SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE
FED."]
I glanced at the serving-man; M. Étienne ordered him at once from the
room.
"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very
richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"
"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is--" I paused in a
dearth of words worthy of her.
"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little slow-poke!
You saw her? And she said--"
He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.
"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I told him.
"And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you."
"She does!" he cried, flushing. "Félix, does she? You cannot know."
"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she wouldn't
have wept so much, just over me."
"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.
"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she came down
in the night with a candle and cried over me."
"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne?
What said she, Félix?"
"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance
of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something
you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise's
son."
"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!"
"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafré. His mother was Rochelaise, I
think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to
hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since
then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de
Montluc in marriage."
He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.
"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should have her
when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive."
"Great God!" said M. Étienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm
of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry
handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:
"But she--mademoiselle?"
"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said. "Mademoiselle
hates him."
"Does she know--"
"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made answer.
"Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning,
or I shall never make it clear to you."
"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.
He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I
talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got
deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life,
me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to
Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Étienne, to--well, you shall know.