wavering answer, folded up the paper, and was going back to the
Secretary of State, who was working in the next room, when on casting a
glance sideways his eye fell upon Mademoiselle de Scuderi, who was
present in the salon and had taken her seat in a small easy-chair not
far from De Maintenon. Her he now approached, whilst the pleasant smile
which at first had played about his mouth and on his cheeks, but had
then disappeared, now won the upper hand again. Standing immediately in
front of Mademoiselle, and unfolding the poem once more, he said
softly, "Our Marchioness will not countenance in any way the
gallantries of our amorous gentlemen, and give us evasive answers of a
kind that are almost quite forbidden. But you, Mademoiselle, what is
your opinion of this poetic petition?" De Scuderi rose respectfully
from her chair, whilst a passing blush flitted like the purple sunset
rays in evening across the venerable lady's pale cheeks, and she said,
bowing gently and casting down her eyes,

"Un amant qui craint les voleurs
N'est point digne d'amour."

(A lover who is afraid of robbers is not worthy of love.)

The king, greatly struck by the chivalric spirit breathed in these few
words, which upset the whole of the poem with its yards and yards of
tirades, cried with sparkling eyes, "By St. Denis, you are right.
Mademoiselle! Cowardice shall not be protected by any blind measures
which would affect the innocent along with the guilty; Argenson and La
Regnie must do their best as they are."

All these horrors of the day La Martiniere depicted next morning in
startling colours when she related to her mistress the occurrence of
the previous night; and she handed over to her the mysterious casket in
fear and trembling. Both she and Baptiste, who stood in the corner as
pale as death, twisting and doubling up his night-cap, and hardly able
to speak in his fear and anxiety,--both begged Mademoiselle in the most
piteous terms and in the names of all the saints, to use the utmost
possible caution in opening the box. De Scuderi, weighing the locked
mystery in her hand, and subjecting it to a careful scrutiny, said
smiling, "You are both of you ghost-seers! That I am not rich, that
there are not sufficient treasures here to be worth a murder, is known
to all these abandoned assassins, who, you yourself tell me, spy out
all that there is in a house, as well as it is to me and you. You think
they have design