ice to pay for the knowledge
that M. de Marsac is as forward on the field as on the stairs.'

I bowed my acknowledgments.

'This fellow,' I said, 'is he much hurt?'

'Tut, tut! I thought I had saved the marshal all trouble, M. Francois
replied. 'Is he not dead, Gil?'

The poor wretch made answer for himself, crying out piteously, and in
a choking voice, for a priest to shrive him. At that moment Simon
Fleix returned with our torch, which he had lighted at the nearest
cross-streets, where there was a brazier, and we saw by this light that
the man was coughing up blood, and might live perhaps half an hour.

'Mordieu! That comes of thrusting too high!' M. Francois muttered,
regretfully. An inch lower, and there would have been none of this
trouble! I suppose somebody must fetch one. Gil,' he continued, 'run,
man, to the sacristy in the Rue St. Denys, and get a Father. Or--stay!
Help to lift him under the lee of the wall there. The wind cuts like a
knife here.'

The street being on the slope of the hill, the lower part of the house
nearest us stood a few feet from the ground, on wooden piles, and the
space underneath it, being enclosed at the back and sides, was used as a
cart-house. The servants moved the dying man into this rude shelter, and
I accompanied them, being unwilling to leave the young gentleman alone.
Not wishing, however, to seem to interfere, I walked to the farther end,
and sat down on the shaft of a cart, whence I idly admired the strange
aspect of the group I had left, as the glare of the torch brought now
one and now another into prominence, and sometimes shone on M. Francois'
jewelled fingers toying with his tiny moustache, and sometimes on the
writhing features of the man at his feet.

On a sudden, and before Gil had started on his errand, I saw there was
a priest among them. I had not seen him enter, nor had I any idea whence
he came. My first impression was only that here was a priest, and that
he was looking at me--not at the man craving his assistance on the
floor, or at those who stood round him, but at me, who sat away in the
shadow beyond the ring of light!

This was surprising; but a second glance explained it, for then I saw
that he was the Jacobin monk who had haunted my mother's dying hours.
And, amazed as much at this strange RENCONTRE as at the man's boldness,
I sprang up and strode forwards, forgetting, in an impulse of righteous
anger, the office he came to do. And this the more