hen, go away from here; go to court, where the death of the
marechal and the emancipation of the king must have turned everything
topsy turvy, and where you certainly have business, if only to obtain
the marshal's baton which was promised to you. Leave Monseigneur Etienne
to me. But give me your word of honor as a gentleman to approve whatever
I may do for him."

The duke struck his hand into that of his physician as a sign of
complete acceptance, and retired to his own apartments.

When the days of a high and mighty seigneur are numbered, the physician
becomes a personage of importance in the household. It is, therefore,
not surprising to see a former bonesetter so familiar with the Duc
d'Herouville. Apart from the illegitimate ties which connected him, by
marriage, to this great family and certainly militated in his favor, his
sound good sense had so often been proved by the duke that the old man
had now become his master's most valued counsellor. Beauvouloir was the
Coyctier of this Louis XI. Nevertheless, and no matter how valuable his
knowledge might be, he never obtained over the government of Normandy,
in whom was the ferocity of religious warfare, as much influence
as feudality exercised over that rugged nature. For this reason the
physician was confident that the prejudices of the noble would thwart
the desires and the vows of the father.

CHAPTER V. GABRIELLE

Great physician that he was, Beauvouloir saw plainly that to a being so
delicately organized as Etienne marriage must come as a slow and gentle
inspiration, communicating new powers to his being and vivifying it with
the fires of love. As he had said to the father, to impose a wife on
Etienne would be to kill him. Above all it was important that the young
recluse should not be alarmed at the thought of marriage, of which he
knew nothing, or be made aware of the object of his father's wishes.
This unknown poet conceived as yet only the beautiful and noble passion
of Petrarch for Laura, of Dante for Beatrice. Like his mother he was all
pure love and soul; the opportunity to love must be given to him, and
then the event should be awaited, not compelled. A command to love would
have dried within him the very sources of his life.

Maitre Antoine Beauvouloir was a father; he had a daughter brought
up under conditions which made her the wife for Etienne. It was so
difficult to foresee the events which would make a son, disowned by his
father and de