ime the steed would be stolen, the treaty signed, and the Medici and
her maids-of-dishonour well on the way to Chartres.

The question was, whether or not Henry III. would throw himself wholly
into the hands of the League at the forthcoming Parliament of Blois, or
if, by a secret compact with the Bearnais, the gentlemen of the Huguenot
Gascon provinces would attend to support the royal authority.

"I shall go, if our Bearnais commands me," said Turenne; "but I wager
they will dye the Loire as red as ever they did the Seine on
Bartholomew's Day--aye, and fringe the Chateau with us, as they did at
Amboise. These Guises do not forget their ancient tricks."

"And right pretty you would look, my good Lord Turenne, your frosty
beard wagging in the wind and a raven perched on your bald pate!"

"If I were in your shoes, I would not talk so freely either of beards or
of baldness, D'Aubigne," growled Turenne. "I mind well when a certain
clever lad had no more than the beard of a rabbit, which only comes out
at night for fear of the dogs!"

"It is strange," said D'Aubigne, not in the least offended with his
comrade, "that he who has no fear of the swords, should grow weak at the
fluttering of a kerchief or before the artful carelessness of a
neck-ribbon."

"Not strange at all," said Turenne; "is he not a man and a Bearnais?
Besides, being a Bourbon, he will pay those the best to whom he owes
least. And we, who have loved him as we never loved father or mother,
wife or child, will be sent back to the chimney-corner with our thumbs
to suck!"

"Aye, because he is sure of us!" retorted D'Aubigne gloomily,
unconsciously prefiguring a day when he should sit, an exile in a
foreign town, eating his heart out, and writing a great book to the
praise of an ungrateful, or perhaps forgetful master.

"The most curious thing of all," said Rosny, "is that we shall always
love him--put down his fickleness to the account of others, cherish him
as a deceived woman does the man from whom she cannot wholly tear her
heart!"

"Yes," cried a new voice, as a red hassock of hair showed itself over
the brown Capuchin's robe, "these things will we do--some of us in
exile, all in sorrow, some in rags, and some in motley----"

He opened the robe wider, and under the stained brown the jester's
motley met their eyes.

"Who is this fool who mixes so freely in the councils of his betters?"
cried Turenne. "Is there never a wooden horse and a provost-ma