ted--we are not as Philip of Spain, our enemy. We do not burn
pretty brave maids such as you!"

It was then that Jean-aux-Choux forced himself forward on his big,
blundering Spanish mare, driving between a couple of cavaliers, and
sending them right and left like ninepins.

"Great Duke," he said, "you would do well to let us go on our way. You
talk much of His Majesty--I ask you which. You have served the
'Bearnais'--you will serve him again. Even now you have cast an anchor
to windward. It sticks firmly in the camp of the Bearnais, not far from
that King's tent."

Duke d'Epernon turned on Jean-aux-Choux his fierce, dark eyes.

"It seems to me that I have seen you before, my churl of the carroty
locks," he said; "were you not at the King's last fooling in the
Louvre?"

"Aye," said Jean, "that I was, and in a certain window-seat behind a
certain curtain I gave your Dukeship a certain letter----"

"It is enough," muttered the Duke, waving his hand hastily. "I am on my
way to Angouleme, which is my government. Come all of you with me to
Blois, and there abide quietly in a house till I return to salute the
King. The Estates meet in the late autumn, and if things go as it seems
likely after this Day of the Barricades, we may need your blood royal,
my excellent Clerk d'Albret--your best wisdom, my good and eloquent
Professor--your rarest quips, my merry scarecrow--and, as for you,
little lady, my newly-wed wife Marguerite will not be sorry to have a
companion so frank and charming among the fading blossoms and over-ripe
fruit of the court of the Queen-mother!"

"My lord," said the Professor, "I fear that I have not time to wait upon
the King. I must go to visit my mother, and carry this maid with me!"

The Duke smiled.

"I am not demanding your learned preferences, most eloquent Professor,"
he said; "I am taking you into safe keeping in the name of the King.
After all, I am not an ignorant man, and I know well that it was a
certain Doctor Anatole Long who, in the full concourse of the Sorbonne,
voted alone for the rights of the Valois. Give the King, therefore, a
chance of voicing his thanks. Also, since the King is at Chartres and I
must speed to Angouleme, I will leave you at Blois in good and
comfortable keeping with the young damsel, your niece, taking with me
only this young man, that he may see some good Leaguer fighting. He hath
been, I dare say, on the Barricades himself. It is permitted to his age
to be fo