e road.

CHAPTER XIV. M. DE RAMBOUILLET.

For a while we were but a melancholy party. The incident I have last
related which seemed to admit of more explanations than one--left me
in a state of the greatest perplexity; and this prevailed with me for a
time, and was only dissipated at length by my seeing my own face, as it
were, in a glass. For, chancing presently to look behind me, I observed
that Simon Fleix was riding, notwithstanding his fine hat and feather
and his new sword, in a posture and with an air of dejection difficult
to exaggerate; whereon the reflection that master and man had the same
object in their minds--nay, the thought that possibly he bore in his
bosom a like token to that which lay warm in mine--occurring to me, I
roused myself as from some degrading dream, and, shaking up the Cid,
cantered forward to join Rosny, who, in no cheerful mood himself, was
riding steadily forward, wrapped to his eyes in his cloak.

The news of the King of Navarre's illness had fallen on him, indeed, in
the midst of his sanguine scheming with the force of a thunderbolt.
He saw himself in danger of losing at once the master he loved and the
brilliant future to which he looked forward; and amid the imminent crash
of his hopes and the destruction of the system in which he lived, he had
scarcely time to regret the wife he was leaving at Rosny or the quiet
from which he was so suddenly called. His heart was in the South, at La
Ganache, by Henry's couch. His main idea was to get there quickly at all
risks. The name of the King of Navarre's physician was constantly on his
lips. 'Dortoman is a good man. If anyone call save him, Dortoman will,'
was his perpetual cry. And whenever he met anyone who had the least
appearance of bearing news, he would have me stop and interrogate him,
and by no means let the traveller go until he had given us the last
rumour from Blois--the channel through which all the news from the South
reached us.

An incident which occurred at the inn that evening cheered him somewhat;
the most powerful minds being prone, I have observed, to snatch at omens
in times of uncertainty. An elderly man, of strange appearance, and
dressed in an affected and bizarre fashion, was seated at table when we
arrived. Though I entered first in my assumed capacity of leader of the
party, he let me pass before him without comment, but rose and solemnly
saluted M. de Rosny, albeit the latter walked behind me and was much