ll you a
secret. In a month at the outside----"

I stopped him hurriedly, exclaiming, "Be careful, Raoul, or you may
tell too much."

Looking at me in consternation, he said slowly, "You do not mean to
suggest that you have gone over to Mazarin?"

"At least I have taken service with him."

"Then we shall be fighting on opposite sides! What a wretched business
it is, breaking up old friendships in this way!"

"Ours need not be broken; and as to your party schemes against the
Cardinal, they are bound to fail. There are too many traitors among
you. Mazarin learns of your plots as soon as they are formed, and you
wonder at his skill in evading them! Why, he has nothing to do but sit
still and watch you destroy each other."

"A pleasant prospect!" exclaimed Raoul; "but now about yourself. You
have not yet explained how you became a _Mazarin_, and it is difficult
to distinguish the truth among a host of fables."

"It will be more difficult for you to believe it;" upon which I
recounted my various adventures since arriving in the city.

"D'Arcy is true as steel," said he, "but too thoughtless to be trusted
with a secret. As to De Retz, I warned the Duke to have nothing to do
with him. He fights for his own hand, and cares not who sinks as long
as he swims."

"Still," I suggested, "the first traitor must have been one of your own
people."

He recognised the force of this, and eagerly questioned me with a view
to learning the name of the man who had sold his party; but in this I
did not gratify him, having no more than a suspicion, though a strong
one, myself.

For some time after this we walked along in silence, but presently he
said, "I suppose you are established in the Palais Royal?"

"No. Belloc--you remember my father's old friend--wished to give me a
commission in the Guards, but the Cardinal thought I could serve him
better in another direction. For the present I am living in the street
which runs at right angles to the front entrance."

"Well within call," remarked Raoul, adding, "meet me at the Luxembourg
this evening; the Duke holds a reception. You need not fear putting
your head in the lion's mouth. There is a truce: the calm before the
storm; so let us make the most of it. You will come, will you not?
That is right. I must leave you now; there is Vautier beckoning, but
we shall meet again this evening."

When he had gone I began to reckon up how things stood. Raoul was my
bosom fri