The Helmet of Navarre Part 43

"Ready?" the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in time to aid in the throttling. "Move on, then."

He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their prisoner. And this time Lucas's fertile wits failed him. He did not slip from his captors' fingers between the room and the street. He was deposited in the big black coach that had aroused my wonder. Louis cracked his whip and off they rumbled.

I laughed all the way back to the Hotel St. Quentin.

XIX

_To the Hotel de Lorraine._

I found M. etienne sitting on the steps before the house. He had doffed his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his sword and poniard were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat, its white plume pinned in a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside him. He had discarded his sling and was engaged in tuning a lute.

Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he asked at once:

"What has happened, Felix?"

"Such a lark!" I cried.

"What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your trouble?"

"No; he pocketed them all. That was not it."

I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain what was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed interest, which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to distress.

"Mordieu!" he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, "if I resemble that dirt--"

"As chalk and cheese," I said. "No one seeing you both could possibly mistake you for two of the same race. But there was nothing in his catalogue that did not fit him. It mentioned, to be sure, the right arm in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist bandaged. I think he cut himself last night when he was after me and I flung the door in his face, for afterward he held his hand behind his back. At any rate, there was the bandage; that was enough to satisfy the captain."

"And they took him off?"

"Truly. They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged him off."

"To the Bastille?" he demanded, as if he could scarcely realize the event.

"To the Bastille. In a big travelling-coach, between the officer and his men. He may be there by this time."

He looked at me as if he were still not quite able to believe the thing.

"It is true, monsieur. If I were inventing it I could not invent anything better; but it is true."

"Certes, you could not invent anything better! Nor anything half so good. If ever there was a case of the biter bit--" he broke off, laughing.

"Monsieur, you know not half how funny it was. Had you seen their faces--the more Lucas swore he was not Comte de Mar, the more the officer was sure he was."

"Felix, you have all the luck. I said this morning you should go about no more without me. Then I send you off on a stupid errand, and see what you get into!"

"Monsieur, I put it to you: Had you been there, how could Lucas have been arrested for Comte de Mar?"

"He won't stay arrested long--more's the pity."

"No," I said regretfully; "but they may keep him overnight."

"Aye, he may be out of mischief overnight. I am happy to say that my face is not known at the Bastille."

"Nor his, I take it. I thought from what I heard last night that he had never been in Paris save for a while in the spring, when he lay perdu.

At the Bastille they may know nothing of the existence of a Paul de Lorraine. But, monsieur, if Mayenne has broken his word already, if they are arresting you on this trumped-up charge, you must get out of the gates to-night."

"Impossible," he answered, smiling; "I have an engagement in Paris."

"But monsieur may not keep it. He must go to St. Denis."

"I must go nowhere but to the Hotel Lorraine."

"Monsieur!"

"Why, look you, Felix; it is the safest spot for me in all Paris; it is the last place where they will look for me. Besides, now that they think me behind bars, they will not be looking for me at all. I shall be as safe as the hottest Leaguer in the camp."

"But in the hotel-"

"Be comforted; I shall not enter the hotel. There is a limit to my madness. No; I shall go softly around to a window in the side street under which I have often stood in the old days. She used to contrive to be in her chamber after supper."

"But, monsieur, how long is it since you were there last?"

"I think it must be two months. I had little heart for it after my father--So, you see, no one will be on the lookout for me to-night."

"Neither will mademoiselle," I made my point.

"I hope she may," he answered. "She will know I must see her to-night.

And I think she will be at the window."

The reasoning seemed satisfactory to him. And I thought one wet blanket in the house was enough.

"Very well, monsieur. I am ready for anything you propose."

"Then I propose supper."

Afterward we played shovel-board, I risking the pistoles mademoiselle had given me. I won five more, for he paid little heed to what he was about, but was ever fidgeting over to the window to see if it was dark enough to start. At length, when it was still between dog and wolf, he announced that he would delay no longer.

"Very well, monsieur," I said with all alacrity.

"But you are not to come!"

"Monsieur!"

"Certainly not. I must go alone to-night."