an last night, I might have
whistled for one to try it! But I must go."

Yet he lingered a minute to see how the lad progressed. The convulsions
which had for a time racked Bazan's vigorous frame had ceased, and a
profuse perspiration was breaking out on his brow.

"Yes, he will recover," said Crillon again, and with greater confidence.

As if the words had reached Bazan's brain, he opened his eyes.

"I did it!" he muttered. "I did it. We are quits, M. de Crillon!"

"Not so!" cried the other, stooping impetuously and embracing him. "Not
quits! The balance is against me now, but I will redress it. Be easy;
your fortune is made, M. de Bazan. While James Berthon de Crillon lives
you shall not lack a friend!"

He kept his word. There can be little doubt that the Laurence de Bazan
who held high office under the Minister Sully, and in particular rose to
be Deputy Superintendent of the Finances in Guienne, was our young
Bazan. This being so, it is clear that he outlived by many years his
patron: for Crillon, "le brave Crillon," whose whim it was to dare
greatly, and on small occasion, died early in the seventeenth
century--in his bed--and lies under a famous stone in the Cathedral of
Avignon. Whereas we find Bazan still flourishing, and a person of
consequence at Court, when Richelieu came to the height of his power.
Nevertheless on him there remains no stone; only some sketch of the
above, and a crabbed note at the foot of a dusty page in a dark
library.

FOR THE CAUSE

I

Paris had never seemed to the eye more peaceful than on a certain
November evening in the year 1591: and this although many a one within
its walls resented the fineness of the night as a mockery, as a scoff
alike at the pain of some and the fury of others.

The moonlight fell on roofs and towers, on the bare open space of the
Place de Greve, and the dark mass of the Louvre, and only here and there
pierced, by chance, a narrow lane, to gleam on some foul secret of the
kennel. The Seine lay a silvery loop about the Ile de la Cite--a loop
cut on this side and that by the black shadows of the Pont au Change,
and the Petit Pont, and broken again westward by the outline of the New
Bridge, which was then in building.

The city itself lay in profound quiet in the depth of the shadow. From
time to time at one of the gates, or in the vaulted lodge of the
Chatelet, a sentinel challenged or an officer spoke. But the bell of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois