wall of the Pyrenees, its
long ridge dominated by the cloven cone of the snow clad Pic du Midi.
There was in the sight of that great barrier, at once natural and
political, a sense of security for this fugitive from the perils and
the hatreds that lurked in Spain beyond. Here in Bearn he was a king's
guest, enjoying the hospitality of the great Castle of Pau, safe from
the vindictive persecution of the mean tyrant who ruled in Spain. And
here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been but for the thought
of this woman--this Marquise de Chantenac--who had gone to such lengths
in her endeavours to soften his exile that her ultimate object could
never have been in doubt to a coxcomb, though it was in some doubt to
Antonio Perez, who had been cured for all time of Coxcombry by suffering
and misfortune, to say nothing of increasing age. It was when he
bethought him of that age of his that he was chiefly intrigued by the
amazing ardour of this great lady of Bearn. A dozen years ago--before
misfortune overtook him--he would have accepted her flagrant wooing as
a proper tribute. For then he had been the handsome, wealthy, witty,
profligate Secretary of State to His Catholic Majesty King Philip II,
with a power in Spain second only to the King's, and sometimes even
greater. In those days he would have welcomed her as her endowments
merited. She was radiantly lovely, in the very noontide of her
resplendent youth, the well-born widow of a gentleman of Bearn. And
it would not have lain within the strength or inclinations of Antonio
Perez, as he once had been, to have resisted the temptation that she
offered. Ever avid of pleasure, he had denied himself no single cup of
it that favouring Fortune had proffered him. It was, indeed, because
of this that he was fallen from his high estate; it was a woman who had
pulled him down in ruin, tumbling with him to her doom. She, poor soul,
was dead at last, which was the best that any lover could have wished
her. But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with gall in his veins
instead of blood. He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant,
reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt,
hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly from long years
of incarceration.

What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal snows
of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him to
awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac? Was it t