father was France,
what was the son--the twelve-year boy so dreaded and so loved? Was he
not France too? Did France plot against France? "All is not well at
Amboise," said the King. If that was true in the sense the father
meant it, what then? Was this dull ailing boy a double parricide to
his father's knowledge?

That, by the law of association of ideas, called up a new thought, and
a rush of warmth, which drew none of its heat from the sunshine,
flushed La Mothe. What if the boy, dull and neglected though he was,
hid such a love for the father as the father hid from the boy, and what
if cunning Stephen La Mothe should find it out and make this torn
France one in heart? And so, because however one follows the clues
through this maze of life they always lead to love at the end, La Mothe
broke into his song again:

"Heigh ho! Love is my life,
Live I in loving, and love I to live.
Heigh ho! Sweetest of strife,
Winning the dearest that life can give.
Love, who denied me,
Hast thou not tried me----

And now, plague take the verse, where is my rhyme for the end?"

But a turn of the road brought him to Limeray with the stream of the
Eisse flowing beyond. Another league and he would reach
Amboise--Amboise, where the shuttles of fate, the man and the woman,
Fear and Love as the King had called them, were waiting to weave into
the warp and woof of life a pattern which would never fade; Amboise,
where an end was to come--he had forgotten to ask Commines what end--an
end which in some obscure way was to serve Commines and serve France.
"If I lift a finger he hangs," said the King. That, no doubt, was the
human slime of the gutter who had roused Commines' contempt, and yet
who was his passport to the castle. A pretty passport, and one not
much to his credit, thought La Mothe, and fell to wondering if Ursula
de Vesc of the uncertain eyes would class them as birds of a
feather--Ursula who found Amboise dull and was to kiss the poet as
Margaret had kissed Alain Chartier. But Chartier had been asleep at
the time, while La Mothe promised himself he would be very much awake,
and then called himself slime of the gutter for the thought. This was
not the chivalry and respect for all women he had learned in Poitou.
Who was he that a woman, sweet and good he had no doubt, should kiss
him because Amboise was dull, and if she did would she be sweet and
good? He pulled a wry face and shook himself angrily,