stale sherbet and the water were still there, the carafes standing on
the table beside an empty comfit box, and a few toilet necessaries; and
it will be believed that I lost no time in examining them. But I made
no discovery, and when I had passed my eye over everything else that
the room contained, and noticed nothing that seemed in the slightest
degree suspicious, I found myself completely at a loss. I went to the
window, and for a moment looked idly into the court.

But neither did any light come thence, and I had turned again and was
about to leave, when my eye alighted on a certain thing and I stopped.

"What is that?" I said. It was a thin case, book-shaped, of Genoa
velvet, somewhat worn.

"Plaister," Maignan, who was waiting at the door, answered. "His
Majesty's hand is not well yet, and as your excellency knows, he--"

"Silence, fool!" I cried, and I stood rooted to the spot, overwhelmed
by the conviction that I held the clue to the mystery, and so shaken by
the horror which that conviction naturally brought with it that I could
not move a finger. A design so fiendish and monstrous as that which I
suspected might rouse the dullest sensibilities, in a case where it
threatened the meanest; but being aimed in this at the King, my master,
from whom I had received so many benefits, and on whose life the
well-being of all depended, it goaded me to the warmest resentment. I
looked round the tennis-court--which, empty, shadowy and silent, seemed
a fit place for such horrors--with rage and repulsion; apprehending in
a moment of sad presage all the accursed strokes of an enemy whom
nothing could propitiate, and who, sooner or later, must set all my
care at nought, and take from France her greatest benefactor.

But, it will be said, I had no proof, only a conjecture; and this is
true, but of it hereafter. Suffice it that, as soon as I had swallowed
my indignation, I took all the precautions affection could suggest or
duty enjoin, omitting nothing; and then, confiding the matter to no one
the two men who were with me excepted--I prepared to observe the issue
with gloomy satisfaction.

The match was to take place at three in the afternoon. A little after
that hour, I arrived at the tennis-court, attended by La Font and other
gentlemen, and M. l'Huillier, the councillor, who had dined with me.
L'Huillier's business had detained me somewhat, and the men had begun;
but as I had anticipated this, I had begged my