virtue
as much of La Rochefoucauld's letters as of the sentiments which the
Chevalier heard me express, I became the honoured guest at his chateau.
Three days after my arrival I sustained a shock by the unexpected
appearance at Canaples of St. Auban. The Chevalier, however, refused
him admittance, and, baffled, the Marquis was forced to withdraw. But he
went no farther than Blois, where he hired himself a room at the Lys de
France. The Chevalier hated him as a mad dog hates water--almost as much
as he hated you. He spoke often of you, and always bitterly."

Before I knew what I had said--

"And Mademoiselle?" I burst out. "Did she ever mention my name?"

Malpertuis looked up quickly at the question, and a wan smile flickered
round his lips.

"Once she spoke of you to me--pityingly, as one might speak of a dead
man whose life had not been good."

"Yes, yes," I broke in. "It matters little. Your story, M. Malpertuis."

"After I had been at the chateau ten days, we learnt that Eugene de
Canaples had been sent to the Bastille. The news came in a letter penned
by his Eminence himself--a bitter, viperish letter, with a covert threat
in every line. The Chevalier's anger went white hot as he read the
disappointed Cardinal's epistle. His Eminence accused Eugene of being a
frondeur; M. de Canaples, whose politics had grown sadly rusted in the
country, asked me the meaning of the word. I explained to him the
petty squabbles between Court and Parliament, in consequence of the
extortionate imposts and of Mazarin's avariciousness. I avowed myself a
partisan of the Fronde, and within three days the Chevalier--who but
a little time before had sought an alliance with the Cardinal's
family--had become as rabid a frondeur as M. de Gondi, as fierce an
anti-cardinalist as M. de Beaufort.

"I humoured him in his new madness, with the result that ere long from
being a frondeur in heart, he thirsted to become a frondeur in deeds,
and he ended by begging me to bear a letter from him to the Coadjutor
of Paris, wherein he offered to place at M. de Gondi's disposal, towards
the expenses of the civil war which he believed to be imminent,--as,
indeed, it is,--the sum of sixty thousand livres.

"Now albeit I had gone to Canaples for purposes of my own, and not as
an agent of M. le Coadjuteur's, still for many reasons I saw fit to
undertake the Chevalier's commission. And so, bearing the letter
in question, which was hot and unguarded, and ch