did, Boussac, it did. He must have pondered on it
afterward--perhaps reflected on how unjustly I had been treated by his
vile minister, Louvois--you say he died in disgrace?--and that may
have--nay, must have, turned his heart. O Boussac! how am I ever to
repay you? Without your thought and exertions what should I have been
now?" and he shuddered as he spoke.

"Oh! la! la!" said Boussac, "never mind about me. The question is now
what do you intend to do in the future?"

"Do!" exclaimed St. Georges. "Do! Why, that which I returned to France
to do, fought against France for--obtain my child. Boussac, where is
that woman now?"

"Woman!--what woman?"

"Ah! Boussac, do not joke. You know very well to what woman I refer.
That young tigress--in her way almost as vile as the woman
Louvigny!--the woman who stole my child."

"Mademoiselle de Roquemaure?"

"Ay, Mademoiselle de Roquemaure! That is the name. Oh Boussac! you
have given me more than my life, far more. The power to wrench my
child away from her keeping, to stand before her a freed man, the
king's pardon in my hand, and tax her with her treachery."

"You will do that?"

"Do it! What am I going to Troyes for--to-night?"

"Ay, true! True! What are you going to Troyes for? Yet I should have
thought, if you recover the child, it is enough. Why--say--bitter
words?"

"Boussac, you--but, there, you are not a father; you cannot understand
all I have suffered in these four years past. Why! man, the galleys,
my exile, the death that yawned for me this morning, were easier than
the loss of my little one. And, with her dying brother's own
confession ringing in my ears still, as it will ring when I stand
before her to-morrow, as I hope, you ask me what need I have to
reproach her--to utter bitter words?"

The mousquetaire shrugged his shoulders; then he muttered something
about the recovery of the child being everything, and that reproaches
brought little satisfaction with them; and after that he again asked
St. Georges when he meant to set out for Troyes?

"To-night, I tell you--to-night. Yet"--and he paused bewildered--"I--I
have no money. Not enough to get me a horse, at least. They have given
me back all they took from me after my condemnation, but there were
only a few guineas left."

"Where is the horse you rode to Paris on when De Mortemart brought
you?"

"Ah!" exclaimed St. Georges, "a good horse--though, alas! at a moment
when my life was in danger and