y story to have on
Paris's lips, would it not be?"

"Indeed, Monseigneur, you are right, but I doubt me the duel will needs
be fought."

"Have I not already said that it shall not be fought?"

Again I shrugged my shoulders. Mazarin grew tiresome with his
repetitions.

"How can it be avoided, your Eminence?"

"Ah, Monsieur, that is your affair."

"My affair?"

"Assuredly. 'T was through your evil agency he was dragged into this
business, and through your agency he must be extricated from it."

"Your Eminence jests!"

"Undoubtedly,--'t is a jesting matter," he answered with terrible irony.
"Oh, I jest! Per Dio! yes. But I'll carry my jest so far as to have you
hanged if this duel be fought--aye, whether my nephew suffers hurt or
not. Now, sir, you know what fate awaits you; fight it--turn it aside--I
have shown you the way. The door, M. de Luynes."

CHAPTER III. THE FIGHT IN THE HORSE-MARKET

I let him go without a word. There was that in his voice, in his eye,
and in the gesture wherewith he bade me hold the door for him, that
cleared my mind of any doubts touching the irrevocable character of his
determination. To plead was never an accomplishment of mine; to argue, I
saw, would be to waste the Cardinal's time to no purpose.

And so I let him go,--and my curse with him,--and from my window I
watched his coach drive away in the drizzling rain, scattering the
crowd of awe-stricken loiterers who had collected at the rumour of his
presence.

With a fervent prayer that his patron saint, the devil, might see fit
to overset his coach and break his neck before he reached the Palace, I
turned from the window, and called Michelot.

He was quick to answer my summons, bringing me the frugal measure of
bread and wine wherewith it was my custom to break my fast. Then,
whilst I munched my crust, I strode to and fro in the little chamber
and exercised my wits to their utmost for a solution to the puzzle his
Eminence had set me.

One solution there was, and an easy one--flight. But I had promised
Andrea de Mancini that I would stand beside him at St. Germain; there
was a slender chance of saving him if I went, whilst, if I stayed away,
there would be nothing left for his Eminence to do but to offer up
prayers for the rest of his nephew's soul.

Another idea I had, but it was desperate--and yet, so persistently did
my thoughts revert to it that in the end I determined to accept it.

I drank a cup of Armagna