haut-de-chausses were of
wine-coloured velvet, richly laced, and he still affected the hanging
sleeves of a fast-disappearing fashion. Valuable lace filled the tops
of his black boots, a valuable jewel glistened here and there upon
his person, and one must needs have pronounced him a fop but for the
strength and resoluteness of his bearing, and the long rapier that hung
from his gold-embroidered baldrick. Such in brief is a portrait of
the man who now confronted me, his fine blue eyes fixed upon my face,
wherein methinks he read but little, search though he might.

"M. de Luynes," he murmured at last, "you appear to find entertainment
in making enemies, and you do it wantonly."

"Have you brought me aside to instruct me in the art of making friends?"

"Possibly, M. de Luynes; and without intending an offence, permit me to
remark that you need them."

"Mayhap. But I do not seek them."

"I have it in my heart to wish that you did; for I, M. de Luynes, seek
to make a friend of you. Nay, do not smile in that unbelieving fashion.
I have long esteemed you for those very qualities of dauntlessness and
defiance which have brought you so rich a crop of hatred. If you
doubt my words, perhaps you will recall my attitude towards you in the
horse-market yesterday, and let that speak. Without wishing to remind
you of a service done, I may yet mention that I stood betwixt you and
the mob that sought to avenge my friend Canaples. He was my friend; you
stood there, as indeed you have always stood, in the attitude of a foe.
You wounded Canaples, maltreated Vilmorin, defied me; and yet but for my
intervention, mille diables sir, you had been torn to pieces."

"All this I grant is very true, Monsieur," I made reply, with deep
suspicion in my soul. "Yet, pardon me, if I confess that to me it proves
no more than that you acted as a generous enemy. Pardon my bluntness
also--but what profit do you look to make from gaining my friendship?"

"You are frank, Monsieur," he said, colouring slightly, "I will be none
the less so. I am a frondeur, an anti-cardinalist. In a word, I am
a gentleman and a Frenchman. An interloping foreigner, miserly,
mean-souled, and Jesuitical, springs up, wins himself into the graces
of a foolish, impetuous, wilful queen, and climbs the ladder which she
holds for him to the highest position in France. I allude to Mazarin;
this Cardinal who is not a priest; this minister of France who is not a
Frenchman; this bel