unacknowledged. I begged leave, therefore, to distribute a small
gratuity among his attendants, and requested him to do me the honour of
drinking a bottle of wine with me. This being speedily procured, at such
an expense as is usual in these places, where prisoners pay, according
as they are rich or poor, in purse or person, kept; us sitting for an
hour, and finally sent us to our pallets perfectly satisfied with one
another.

The events of the day, however, and particularly one matter, on which I
have not dwelt at length, proved as effectual to prevent my sleeping as
if I had been placed in the dampest cell below the castle. So much had
been crowded into a time so short that it seemed as if I had had until
now no opportunity of considering whither I was being hurried, or what
fortune awaited me at the end of this turmoil. From the first
appearance of M. d'Agen in the morning, with the startling news that the
Provost-Marshal was seeking me, to my final surrender and encounter with
Bruhl on the stairs, the chain of events had run out so swiftly that I
had scarcely had time at any particular period to consider how I stood,
or the full import of the latest check or victory. Now that I had
leisure I lived the day over again, and, recalling its dangers and
disappointments, felt thankful that all had ended so fairly.

I had the most perfect confidence in Maignan, and did not doubt that
Bruhl would soon weary, if he had not already wearied, of a profitless
siege. In an hour at most--and it was not yet midnight--the king would
be free to go home; and with that would end, as far as he was concerned,
the mission with which M. de Rosny had honoured me. The task of
communicating his Majesty's decision to the King of Navarre would
doubtless be entrusted to M. de Rambouillet, or some person of similar
position and influence; and in the same hands would rest the honour and
responsibility of the treaty which, as we all know now, gave after a
brief interval and some bloodshed, and one great providence, a lasting
peace to France. But it must ever be--and I recognised this that
night with a bounding heart, which told of some store of youth yet
unexhausted--a matter of lasting pride to me that I, whose career but
now seemed closed in failure, had proved the means of conferring so
especial a benefit on my country and religion.

Remembering, however, the King of Navarre's warning that I must not look
to him for reward, I felt greatly dou