d his person; but, in the end, I consented, making
only the condition that Maignan should follow us at a distance. This
he conceded, and I sent for two plain suits, and we dressed in my
closet. The King, delighted with the frolic, was in his wildest mood.
He uttered an infinity of jests, and cut a thousand absurd antics; and,
rallying me on my gravity, soon came near to making me repent of the
easiness which had led me to fall in with his humour.

However, it was too late to retreat, and in a moment we were standing
in the street. It would not have surprised me if he had celebrated his
freedom by some noisy extravagance there; but he refrained, and
contented himself--while Maignan locked the postern behind us--with
cocking his hat and lugging forward his sword, and assuming an air of
whimsical recklessness, as if an adventure were to be instantly
expected.

But the moon had not yet risen, the night was dark, and for some time
we met with nothing more diverting than a stumble over a dead dog, a
word with a forward wench, or a narrow escape from one of those liquid
douches that render the streets perilous for common folk and do not
spare the greatest. Naturally, I began to tire, and wished myself with
all my heart back at the Arsenal; but Henry, whose spirits a spice of
danger never failed to raise, found a hundred things to be merry over,
and some of which he made a great tale of afterwards. He would go on;
and presently, in the Rue de la Pourpointerie, which we entered as the
clocks struck the hour before midnight, his persistence was rewarded.

By that time the moon had risen; but, naturally, few were abroad so
late, and such as were to be seen belonged to a class among whom even
Henry did not care to seek adventures. Our astonishment was great
therefore when, half-way down the street--a street of tall, mean houses
neither better nor much worse than others in that quarter--we saw,
standing in the moonlight at an open door, a boy about seven years old.

The King saw him first, and, pressing my arm, stood still. On the
instant the child, who had probably seen us before we saw him, advanced
into the road to us. "Messieurs," he said, standing up boldly before
us and looking at us without fear, "my father is ill, and I cannot
close the shutter."

The boy's manner, full of self-possession, and his tone, remarkable at
his age, took us so completely by surprise--to say nothing of the late
hour and the deserted str