your return an hour and more, Monseigneur."
"Lay another cover," I answered, repressing the surprise I could notbut feel on hearing of this visit, so strangely _a propos_. "Doubtlesshe has come to dine with me."
Barely staying to take off my cloak, I went upstairs with an air asgay as possible, and, making my visitor a hundred apologies for theinconvenience I had caused him, insisted he should sit down with me.This he was nothing loth to do; though, as presently appeared, hiserrand was only to submit to me some papers connected with the new taxof a penny in the shilling, which it was his duty to lay before me.
I scolded him gayly for the long period which had elapsed since hislast visit, and succeeded so well in setting him at his ease that hepresently began to rally me on my slackness; for I could touch nothingbut a little game and a glass of water. Excusing myself as well as Icould, I encouraged him to continue the attack; and certainly, if agood conscience waits on appetite, I had soon abundant evidence on hisbehalf. He grew merry and talkative, and, telling me some free tales,bore himself altogether so naturally that I had begun to deem mysuspicions baseless, when a chance word gave me new grounds forentertaining them.
I was on the subject of my morning's employment. Knowing how easilyconfidence begets confidence, and that in his position the mattercould not be long kept from him, I told him as a secret where I hadbeen.
"I do not wish all the world to know, my friend," I said; "but you area discreet man, and it will go no farther. I am just from DuHallot's."
HE DROPPED HIS NAPKIN. _Page 20_.]
He dropped his napkin and stooped to pick it up again with a gestureso hasty that it caught my attention and led me to watch him.Moreover, although my words seemed to call for an answer, he did notspeak until he had taken a deep draught of wine; and then he saidonly, "Indeed!" in a tone of such indifference as might at anothertime have deceived me, but now was perfectly patent.
"Yes," I replied, affecting to be engaged with my own plate (we wereeating nuts). "Doubtless you will be able to guess on what subject."
"I?" he said, as quick to answer as he had before been slow. "No, Ithink not."
"La Fin," I said; "and his statements respecting M. de Biron'sfriends."
"Ah!" he replied, shrugging his shoulders. He had contrived to regainhis composure, but I noticed that his hand shook, and I saw him put anut into his mouth with so much salt upon it that he had no choice butto make a grimace. "They tell me he accuses everybody," he grumbled,his eyes on his plate. "Even the King is scarcely safe from him. But Ihave heard no particulars."
"They will be known by and by," I answered prudently. And after that Idid not think it wise to speak farther, lest I should give more than Igot; but as soon as he had finished, and we had washed our hands, Iled him to the closet looking on the river, where I was in the habitof working with my secretaries. I sent them away and sat down with himto his accounts; but in the position in which I found myself, betweensuspicion and perplexity, I could so little command my attention thatI gathered nothing from their items; and had I found another doing theKing's service as negligently I had certainly sent him about hisbusiness. Nevertheless I made some show of auditing them, and hadreached the last roll when something in the fairly written summary,which closed the account, caught my eye. I bent more closely over it,and presently making an occasion to carry the parchment into the nextroom, compared it with the handwriting on the scrap of paper I hadfound in the snowball. A brief scrutiny showed me that they were thework of the same person!
"YOUR SCRIBE MIGHT DO FOR ME." _Page 23_.]
I went back to M. Nicholas, and after attesting the accounts, andmaking one or two notes, remarked in a careless way on the clearnessof the hand. "I am badly in need of a fourth secretary," I added."Your scribe might do for me."
It did not escape me that once again M. Nicholas looked uncomfortable,his red face taking a deeper tinge and his hand going nervously to hispointed gray beard, "I do not think he would do for you," he answered.
"What is his name?" I asked, purposely bending over the papers andavoiding his eyes.
"I have dismissed him," he rejoined curtly. "I do not know where hecould now be found."
"That is a pity--he writes well," I answered, as if it were nothingbut a whim that led me to pursue the subject. "And good clerks arescarce. What was his name?"
"Felix," he said reluctantly.
I had now all I wanted. Accordingly I spoke of another matter andshortly afterward Nicholas rose and went. But he left me in a fever ofdoubt and suspicion; so that for nearly half an hour I walked up anddown the room, unable to decide whether I should treat the warning ofthe snowball with contempt, as the work of a discharged servant, or onthat very account attach the more credit to it. By and by I rememberedthat the last sheet of the roll I had audited bore date the previousday; whence it was clear that Felix had been dismissed within the lasttwenty-four hours, and perhaps after the delivery of his note to me.Such a coincidence, which seemed no less pertinent than strange,opened a wide field for conjecture; and the possibility that Nicholashad really called on me to sound me and learn what I knew presentlyoccurring to my mind, brought me to a final determination to seek outthis Felix, and without the delay of an hour sift the matter to thebottom.
Doubtless I shall seem to some to have acted precipitately, and builtmuch on small foundations. I answer that I had the life of the King mymaster to guard, and in that cause dared neglect no precaution,however trivial, nor any indication, however remote. Would that all mycare and vigilance had longer sufficed to preserve for France the lifeof that great man! But God willed otherwise.
I sent word at once to La Font, my _valet-de-chambre_, the same whoadvised me at the time of my first marriage, to come to me; anddirecting him to make instant and secret inquiry where Felix, a clerkin the Chamber of Accounts, lodged, bade him report to me on my returnfrom the Great Hall, where, it will be remembered, it was my custom togive audience after dinner to all who had business with me. As ithappened, I was detained long that day, and found him awaiting me.Being a man of few words, he said, as soon as the door was shut, "Atthe 'Three Half Moons,' in the Faubourg St. Honore, Monseigneur."
"That is near the Louvre," I answered. "Get me my cloak, and your ownalso; and bring your pistols. I am going for a walk. You willaccompany me."
He was a good man, La Font, and devoted to my interests. "It will benight in half an hour, Monseigneur," he answered respectfully. "Youwill take some of the Swiss?"
"In one word, no!" I rejoined. "We will go out by the stable entrance.In the mean time, and until we return, I will bid Maignan keep thedoor, and admit no one."
The crowd of those who daily left the Arsenal before nightfallhappened to be augmented on this occasion by a troop of my clientsfrom Mantes; tenants on the lands of Rosny, who had lingered after thehour of audience to see the courts and garden. By mingling with thesewe had no difficulty in passing out unobserved; nor, once in thestreets, where a thaw had set in, that filled the kennel with waterand the pavement with slush, was La Font long in bringing me to thehouse I sought. It stood on the outskirts of the St. Honore Faubourg,in a quarter sufficiently respectable, and a street marked neither byextreme squalor nor extravagant ostentation--from one or other ofwhich all desperate enterprises, in my opinion, take their rise. Thehouse, which was high and narrow, presented only two windows to thestreet, but the staircase was sweet and clean, and it was impossibleto cross the threshold without feeling a prepossession in Felix'sfavor. Already I began to think I had come on a fool's errand.
"Which floor?" I asked La Font.
"The highest. Monsieur," he answered.
I went up softly and he followed me. Under the tiles I found a door,and heard some one moving beyond it. Bidding La Font remain on guardoutside, and come to my aid only if I called him, I knocked boldly. Agentle voice bade me enter, and I did so.
There was only one person in the room, a young woman with fair, wavinghair, a pale face, and blue eyes, who, seeing a cloaked st
rangerinstead of the friend or neighbor she anticipated, stared at me in theutmost wonder and some alarm. The room, though poorly furnished, wasparticularly neat and clean; which, taken with the woman's complexion,left me in no doubt as to her native province. On the floor near thefire stood a cradle; and in the window a cage with a singing birdcompleted the homely and pleasant aspect of this interior, which wassuch as, if I could, I would multiply by thousands in every town ofFrance.
A small lamp, which the woman was in the act of lighting, enabled meto see those details, and also discovered me to her. I asked politelyif I spoke to Madame Felix, the wife of M. Felix of the Chamber ofAccounts.
"I am Madame Felix," she answered, advancing slowly