s a time I was served better. But let that pass. Philip, I
have had letters."

"Yes, sire, I know: Lessaix told me."

"You know, and Lessaix told you! You watch me--spy on me, do you?"

"Sire, it is my business to know everything which touches----"

"Yes! and what more do you know? Where did the post come from, you,
whose business it is to know everything?"

"Lessaix thought from Paris."

"From Paris," and Louis raised his voice so that the affirmation in it
might be clearly heard at the further end of the gallery. Then he
turned to the silent group at the doorway, watchful to seize upon any
clue to the King's mystery which might guide their feet clear of the
pitfalls besetting Valmy.

"Let all men go from me but my friend Argenton," he said, with a wave
of the hand which still held the paper crumpled in the grasp. "Let the
guard remain beyond the door, but let no man enter till I give leave.
Paris! Let them think Paris," he went on, lowering his voice, "but
from you, Philip, I have no secrets. We are old friends, too old
friends to have secrets one from the other, eh, Philip, eh? Give me
your arm that I may lean upon it, for I grow tired. It is the heat,
not that I am ill or weaker; the heat, the heat, and I grow tired. And
yet I must walk: I cannot rest; no, not for a moment; this--this horror
has unstrung me."

CHAPTER II

A LESSON IN OBEDIENCE

Passing his clenched hand through the crook of Commines' arm, and
leaning heavily on the stick in the other hand, Louis turned slowly up
the gallery, and for a time both were silent. They made a strange
contrast. The King was shrunken, bowed, and bent, a veritable walking
skeleton to whom the grave already imperiously beckoned nor would take
long denial. With his bony head, his listless face, his lean, long
neck thrust out from the fur of his upturned collar, he resembled a
giant bird of prey. The skinny hand thrust through the crook of
Commines' arm, and still grasping the crumpled despatch, was the claw
of a vulture. Above him, head and shoulders, towered Commines,
square-set, burly, muscular, and as full of life and vigour as his
master was sapless. Just midway to the threescore years and ten, his
bodily powers were at their highest, and in the ten years he had served
Louis his mind had ripened so that few men were more astute, more
shrewd to see and seize upon advantages, whether for himself or his
master. In the King's service few scr