[Footnote 1: All these charges were but too true.]
The young Count smiled: "And is it needful my Lord Duke," he asked, "to take all these precautions in the courtly world of Paris?--Do you yourself take them, my Lord?--I fear not sufficiently."
"Oh! with regard to myself," replied the Duke, it is different. "I am so marked out and noted, they dare not do any thing against me. They would raise up a thousand vengeful hands against them in a moment, and they know that, too well to run such a risk. Neither Henry nor Villequier would hold their lives by an hour's tenure after Guise was dead. But you must take these precautions, my young friend. And now I have nothing more to say, except that, whatever you do to withdraw Marie de Clairvaut from the hands into which she has fallen, I will justify. If any ill befall you, I will avenge you as my brother; and if you deliver her from those whom she hates and abhors, she shall, give you any testimony of her gratitude that she pleases, without a man in France saying you nay."
"Oh, my Lord, it is not for that I go!" exclaimed Charles of Montsoreau, with the blood rushing up again into his cheek. "It is not; surely you believe--"
"Hush! hush!" replied the Duke. "I have fallen into the foolish error of saying too much, my good young friend. But now, fare you well. Make your arrangements as speedily as you can; mount your horse, and onward to Paris, while I apply myself to matters which may well occupy every minute and every thought."
It was about nine o'clock at night, in the spring of the year 1588, that Charles of Montsoreau, with two companions, his faithful Gondrin and the little page, presented himself at the gate of Paris which opened upon the Soissons road. A surly arquebusier with a steel cap on his head, his gun upon his shoulder, and the rest thereof in his hand, was the first person that he encountered at the bridge over the fosse. Some other soldiers were sitting before the guardhouse; and the wicket-gate of the city itself was open, with an armed head protruded through, talking to a country girl with a basket on her arm, who had just passed out of the gate, none the better probably for her visit to the city.
The arquebusier planted himself immediately in the way of the young cavalier and his followers, and seemed prepared to stop them, though on the young Count applying to him for admission, he replied in a surly tone, "I have nothing to do with it. Ask the lieutenant at the gate."