hint of foreignness, as if commonly he were more roughly
garbed. Which was indeed the case, for he was new back from the Western
Seas, and had celebrated his home-coming with a brave suit.

As a youth he had fought under Conde in the religious wars, but had
followed Jean Ribaut to Florida, and had been one of the few survivors
when the Spaniards sacked St. Caroline. With de Gourgues he had sailed
west again for vengeance, and had got it. Thereafter he had been with
the privateers of Brest and La Rochelle, a hornet to search out and
sting the weak places of Spain on the Main and among the islands. But
he was not born to live continually in outland parts, loving rather to
intercalate fierce adventures between spells of home-keeping. The love
of his green Picardy manor drew him back with gentle hands. He had now
returned like a child to his playthings, and the chief thoughts in his
head were his gardens and fishponds, the spinneys he had planted and
the new German dogs he had got for boar-hunting in the forest. He looked
forward to days of busy idleness in his modest kingdom.

But first he must see his kinsman the Admiral about certain affairs of
the New World which lay near to that great man's heart. Coligny was
his godfather, from whom he was named; he was also his kinsman, for the
Admiral's wife, Charlotte de Laval, was a cousin once removed. So to
Chatillon Gaspard journeyed, and thence to Paris, whither the Huguenot
leader had gone for the marriage fetes of the King of Navarre. Reaching
the city on the Friday evening, he was met by ill news. That morning the
Admiral's life had been attempted on his way back from watching the King
at tennis. Happily the wounds were slight, a broken right forefinger and
a bullet through the left forearm, but the outrage had taken away men's
breath. That the Admiral of France, brought to Paris for those nuptials
which were to be a pledge of a new peace, should be the target of
assassins shocked the decent and alarmed the timid. The commonwealth was
built on the side of a volcano, and the infernal fires were muttering.
Friend and foe alike set the thing down to the Guises' credit, and the
door of Coligny's lodging in the Rue de Bethisy was thronged by angry
Huguenot gentry, clamouring to be permitted to take order with the
Italianate murderers.

On the Saturday morning Gaspard was admitted to audience with his
kinsman, but found him so weak from Monsieur Ambrose Pare's drastic
surgery