d murkily. With a
quick burst of anger, Henry leaned from a window and bade them be
extinguished. So, with a jetting of sparks on the hard-beaten earth of
the courtyard, the darkness suddenly re-established itself.

There was, on the side of the Duke, some attempt at a battle of eyes.
But, after all, he had only been the little scion of a Languedocean
squire when the Bearnais was already--the Bearnais.

The Duke bowed himself as if to set knee to the ground, but Henry caught
him up.

"Caumont," he said, using the old boyish name by which they had known
each other in their wild Paris youth, "you have never liked me. You have
never been truly my friend. Why do you come to seek me now?"

The busy scheming brain behind the Valois favourite's brow was working.
He had a bluff subject to deal with, therefore he would be bluff.

"Your Majesty," he said, "there is no one in all France who wishes
better to your cause, or more ill to the League than I. When you are
King, you shall have no more faithful or obedient subject. But
friendship, like love, is born of friendship; it comes not by command.
When the King of Navarre makes me his friend, I shall be his!"

"Spoken like a man, and no courtier," cried the Bearnais, slapping his
strong hand into the white palm of D'Epernon with a report like a
pistol; "I swear I shall be your friend till the day I die!"

And the Bearnais kept his word, and gave his friendship all his life to
the dark, scheming, handsome man, who had served many masters in his
time, but had never loved any man save himself, any woman except his
wife, and any interest outside of his own pocket.

The soldiers of the Guard Royal made a rhyme which went not ill in the
patois of the camp, but which goes lamely enough translated into
English. Somewhat thus it ran:

"Duke Epernon and his wife,
Jean Caumont and his wife,
Cadet Valette and his Cadette,
Louis Nogaret and _his_ wife--
If ever I wagered I would bet
My pipe, my lass, and eke my life,
That this brave world was made and set
_For Duke Epernon and his wife--
Jean Caumont and his wife,
Louis Nogaret and his wife,
Cadet Valette and his Cadette!_"

And so _Da Capo_--to any tune which happened to occur to them in their
semi-regal license of King's free guardsmen.

Which was only the barrack and guard-room way of saying that Jean Louis
de Nogaret, Cadet de la Valette, Duc d'Epernon and royal favourite,
looked