adame, my good hostess, there is nothing he
dislikes so much as the smell of good meat spoiled in the basting."

"I will attend to the basting myself, and that forthwith!" cried the
lady of the Golden Lark, darting kitchen-wards at full speed, and
forgetting all the questions she had come up to ask of Claire in the
absence of her legitimate protectors.

Jean-aux-Choux laughed as she went out, and inclined his ear. Sounds
which indicated the basting of not yet inanimate flesh, arrived from the
kitchen.

"Mistress, mistress," cried a voice, "I am dead, bruised, scalded--have
pity on me!"

"Pity is it, you rascal?"--the sharp tones of Madame Celeste rose
high--"have you not wasted my good dripping, burnt my meat, offended
these gentlemen, spoiled their dinner, so that they will report ill
things of the Golden Lark to his most noble Grace of Guise?"

"Pity--oh, pity!"

Followed a rapid rushing of feet to and fro in the kitchen. Furniture
was overturned. Something of the nature of a basting-ladle struck
sonorously on tables and scattered patty-pans on the floor. A door
slammed, shaking the house, and a blue-clad kitchen boy fled down the
narrow street, while Madame Celeste, basting-ladle in hand, fumed and
gesticulated in his wake.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GOLDEN LARK IN ORLEANS TOWN

"Now," said Jean-aux-Choux, "unless I go down and help at the
turning-spit myself, we are further off dinner than ever. I will also
pump the lady dry of information in a quarter of an hour, which, in such
a Leaguer town, is always a useful thing. But stay where you are, my
lady Claire, and keep the door open. You will smell burnt fat, but the
Fool of the Three Henries will be with you in as many jumps of a
grasshopper whenever you want him. You have only to call, and lo, you
have me!"

When Jean had disappeared to do double duty as spy and kitchen-drudge
beneath, Claire went to the window which looked out upon the
market-place. From beneath in the kitchen she could hear shouts of
laughter climb up and die away. She knew that Jean-aux-Choux was at his
tricks, and that, with five minutes' grace, he could get to windward of
any landlady that ever lived, let alone such a merry plump one as Madame
Celeste.

That dame indeed disliked all pretty women on principle. But she was
never quite sure whether she preferred an ugly witty man who made her
laugh, or a handsome dull man who only treated her as a gentleman ought.
But women--youn