ace of
God, Prince of Paris and the Upper Seine? Or will the little Prince of
Bearn beat them, and be Henry IV., King of France and Navarre, Protector
of the Churches? Curse him too! He is thirty-six. He is my age. But he
is young and strong, and has all before him. While I--I--oh, my God,
have mercy on me! Have mercy on me, O God in Heaven!'

With the last word he fell on his knees on the step before the window,
and burst into such an agony of unmanly tears and sobbings as I had
never dreamed of or imagined, and least of all in the King of France.
Hardly knowing whether to be more ashamed or terrified, I turned at all
risks, and stealthily lifting the curtain, crept out with infinite care;
and happily with so much good fortune as to escape detection. There was
space enough between the two curtains to admit my body and no more; and
here I stood a short while to collect my thoughts. Then, striking my
scabbard against the wall, as though by accident, and coughing loudly
at the same moment, I twitched the curtain aside with some violence and
re-entered, thinking that by these means I had given him warning enough.

But I had not reckoned on the darkness in which the room lay, or the
excitable state in which I had left him. He heard me, indeed, but being
able to see only a tall, indistinct figure approaching him, he took
fright, and falling back against the moonlit window, as though he saw
a ghost, thrust out his hand, gasping at the same time two words, which
sounded to me like 'Ha! Guise!'

The next instant, discerning that I fell on my knee where I stood,
and came no nearer, he recovered himself with an effort, which his
breathing made very apparent, he asked in an unsteady voice who it was.

'One of your Majesty's most faithful servants,' I answered, remaining on
my knee, and affecting to see nothing.

Keeping his face towards me, he sidled to the lamp and strove to
withdraw the shade. But his fingers trembled so violently that it was
some time before he succeeded, and set free the cheerful beams, which,
suddenly filling the room with radiance, disclosed to my wondering
eyes, instead of darkness and the cold gleam of the moon, a profusion
of riches, of red stuffs and gemmed trifles and gilded arms crowded
together in reckless disorder. A monkey chained in one corner began
to gibber and mow at me. A cloak of strange cut, stretched on a wooden
stand, deceived me for an instant into thinking that there was a third
pers