you please to a prisoner,' I retorted coldly.

'Turenne commonly does--to whom he pleases!' he answered. The next
moment he made me start by saying, as he drew out a comfit-box and
opened it, 'I am just from the little fool you have bewitched. If she
were in my power I would have her whipped and put on bread and water
till she came to her senses. As she is not, I must take another way.
Have you any idea, may I ask,' he continued in his cynical tone, 'what
is going to become of you, M. de Marsac?'

I replied, my heart inexpressibly lightened by what he had said of
mademoiselle, that I placed the fullest confidence in the justice of the
King of Navarre.

He repeated the name in a tone, I did not understand.

'Yes, sir, the King of Navarre,' I answered firmly.

'Well, I daresay you have good reason to do so,' he rejoined with a
sneer. 'Unless I am mistaken he knew a little more of this affair than
he acknowledges.'

'Indeed? The King of Navarre?' I said, staring stolidly at him.

'Yes, indeed, indeed, the King of Navarre!' he retorted, mimicking me,
with a nearer approach to anger than I had yet witnessed in him. 'But
let him be a moment, sirrah!' he continued, 'and do you listen to me. Or
first look at that. Seeing is believing.'

He drew out as he spoke a paper, or, to speak more correctly, a
parchment, which he thrust with a kind of savage scorn into my hand.
Repressing for the moment the surprise I felt, I took it to the window,
and reading it with difficulty, found it to be a royal patent drawn,
as far as I could judge, in due form, and appointing some person
unknown--for the name was left blank--to the post of Lieutenant-Governor
of the Armagnac, with a salary of twelve thousand livres a year!

'Well, sir?' he said impatiently.

'Well?' I answered mechanically. For my brain reeled; the exhibition of
such a paper in such a way raised extraordinary thoughts in my mind.

'Can you read it?' he asked.

'Certainly,' I answered, telling myself that he would fain play a trick
on me.

'Very well,' he replied, 'then listen. I am going to condescend; to make
you an offer, M. de Marsac. I will procure you your freedom, and fill up
the blank, which you see there, with your name--upon one condition.'

I stared at him with all the astonishment it was natural for me to feel
in the face, of such a proposition. 'You will confer this office on me?'
I muttered incredulously.

'The king having placed it at my disposal,'