e high seas, is taken, and, as I say,
condemned. If you have any power with the king, if you know
aught that may weigh with him, I beseech you lose no effort.
It is Monday morning, I repeat, at dawn that he dies. Your
respectful servitor,

"BOUSSAC."

The messenger departed--and about his fidelity he had no doubt, so
well did he know him--Boussac mounted his horse and rode to where the
three troops of the Mousquetaires now in Paris on guard duty were
quartered. Then he made his way to the senior officer in command,
begged leave of him on urgent matters of the last importance--so
urgent, indeed, did he represent them to be that he stated he was
about to seek an after-supper audience of the king--obtained the
leave, and, procuring a fresh horse, set out for Versailles.

"I will tell him," he said, "who St. Georges is, whom he believes
himself to be. The late duke was Louis's friend in the days when the
king's heart was young and fresh--surely he will, at least, grant a
reprieve. More especially if I tell him all of De Roquemaure's
villainy. As for the sister--if she is what St. Georges told me in his
last letter he felt convinced she was--she will do nothing. Yet, _mon
Dieu! mon Dieu!_ who can look in those eyes as I have done and deem
her so vile? Surely, surely, though he stands in her way so much, she
will not let him go to his doom. Even though she knows for certain he
is De Vannes, she will strive to save him. She must!"

It was no easy thing to approach Louis at the after-supper audience,
free as the monarch generally made himself for an hour at that period,
and in spite of an officer of the Mousquetaires being a more or less
favoured person. For there were many who had greater claims than a
mousquetaire to the royal ear, the royal salutation--a finger to the
hat for a man, the hat lowered to the right ear for a lady--to the
royal smile.

There were, to wit, the bishops, the ladies of the court, the marshals
and the bastards, the ministers and many others. And to-night the king
was, and had been for some days, so depressed, so for him almost
angry, that few took this period for presenting petitions or requests.
His great fleet was shattered by the hereditary enemies of
France--since the Spanish Armada no fleet had ever been so
shattered!--his power and might were broken, even if for a time only;
and though he had told Tourville--with that royal graci