Montaigne. He fails to appear. Chance brings others here, and lo! it
becomes a new game. And D'Hérouville will be out of hospital to-morrow
or next day. Quebec promises to become as lively as Paris. Diane, he
called her. What is her object in concealing her name? By all the
gargoyles of Notre Dame, but she would lure a bishop from his fish of a
Friday!"

He gathered up a pinch of the ash and blew it into the air.

"Happily the poet smelt nothing but paper. Lockets and love-letters;
and D'Hérouville and I for cutting each other's throats! That is
droll. . . . My faith, I will do it! It will be a tolerably good
stroke. 'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'! Chevalier,
Chevalier! Dip steel into blood, and little comes of it; but dip steel
into that black liquid named ink, and a kingdom topples. She is to
become a nun, too, she says. I think not."

It was the Vicomte d'Halluys; and when, shortly after this soliloquy,
Montaigne came in, he saw that the vicomte was smiling and stabbing
with the tip of his finger some black ash which sifted about on the
table.




CHAPTER XX

A DEATH WARRANT OR A MARRIAGE CONTRACT

"Well, Gabrielle," said Anne, curiously, "what do you propose to do?"