n contempt.
"Here Monseigneur and mademoiselle's presence protect you."

"But if I took them elsewhere, even to Paris--and, heavens! how I wish
I could--Amboise would be duller than ever," protested Villon, then
added, with a significance of tone which gave the careless words a
weight, "let us hope that Monseigneur and mademoiselle can protect each
other as well as me."

Again there was a dangerous silence, and this time it was Ursula de
Vesc who turned aside the threatening storm.

"Monsieur La Mothe is to cure our dullness. Tell us a story, monsieur,
if you will neither sing nor play. We love a story, do we not,
Charles?"

"A story?" repeated La Mothe slowly. The chance suggestion, more than
half malicious, had given him an unexpected opening, and he was turning
in his mind how best to use it. "Why, yes, I think I might. Once upon
a time----"

"Wait a moment," said Charles. "Here, Ursula," and he rose from his
stool as he spoke, "you sit down and I will sit at your feet and lean
against your knee. There! That is better. Now we are both
comfortable. What is the story about, monsieur?"

"It is an eastern tale, Monseigneur."

"I like the east better than the west, don't you, Ursula?" and he
looked up in the girl's face with a laugh, then at Commines in a way
which lent the words point and meaning. Valmy, La Mothe remembered,
lay towards the west. "Now, monsieur, we are ready."

"There was once a king of the Genie who dwelt in a certain part of
Arabia. He was a very great and a very wise king, the greatest and
wisest his kingdom had known for many centuries. During his reign he
had added province to province----"

"At whose expense?" broke in Villon. "In love and the building of
kingdoms there is always a giving and a taking."

"Silence!" cried Charles sharply. "If you interrupt again I will have
you removed, even though you are who you are. Now, monsieur, go on,
please."

"He added province to province," continued La Mothe, "until in all that
part of Arabia there was no such kingdom for greatness or for power,
and no king so feared by the kings of the surrounding countries. But
though his affairs were so prosperous he had one bitter grief which was
never absent from his thoughts: he was estranged from his only son,
whom he loved with all a father's love."

"Yes," said Charles gravely, "I see this is really an eastern story: a
kind of a fairy tale, is it not, Monsieur La Mothe? A tale on