nce see an exception to the rule."

"I hardly follow you."

"I will explain. Between us there is this difference. In the search
for happiness that every man makes I remained in the world, and you
left it and turned philosopher. The result is that I am fairly
satisfied with life, whereas you are sick of it in your heart. Yet,
until this disaster came to you, you tried to play the happy man with
your lute, your 'Plutarch's Lives,' and your hermit's cell of a house.
Is it not so?"

I made no answer, and he continued:

"Last night, for some reason of your own--perhaps because you still
clung to your belief in your own way of life--you refused a chance;
that chance has gone; but another is left, and it remains for you to
take it or not."

"What is left?"

"What is left is this. Last night you refused the sauce of a prince of
the blood; to-day will you refuse the soup of a Queen?"

"Of a Queen!"

"Yes; of the Queen of France. In brief, the Queen wants a reliable
person to do something for her. It must be someone unknown to the
Court. Will you undertake the business or not? It will, at any rate,
enable you to leave Paris in safety, in broad day if you will, though
out of Paris you may have to look to your skin."

Like an old war-horse I scented the battle, and my blood flamed through
me. Le Brusquet was right. With cunning knowledge he had pulled at my
heart-strings, and laid bare my secret to myself. Win or lose, I now
knew that I had to come back to the world; and it should be now. I
rose to my feet.

"I accept," I said, "whatever is offered me."

"I thought you would," he answered; "and I may tell you that De Lorgnac
knows of this. At first it was he who was to have undertaken the
affair; but he is too well known, and the Queen would have none of him.
He it was who suggested your name to me; and," he went on, with a
smile, "it was all prearranged that he should leave us together, so
that I might open the matter to you."

"But the Queen! Perhaps----"

"There is no perhaps about it. The Queen asked De Lorgnac to find her
an agent, and he has named you."

"I was going to say that if the Queen finds I am bourgeois----"

"We can leave the matter of a coat-of-arms to the Queen." And he
laughed as he continued: "Perhaps that may come to the plain Monsieur
Broussel--and--it has just gone compline, and we, or rather you, must
see the Queen."

"I am ready," I said.

"Then let us be away! Ever