y burned your cure, great simpleton?"
said a sergeant, leaning upon the fork of his arquebus; "after him
another would come. You might have taken one of our generals in his
stead, who are all cures at present; for me, I am a Royalist, and I say
it frankly."

"Hold your tongue!" cried La Pipe; "let the girl speak. It is these dogs
of Royalists who always disturb us in our amusements."

"What say you?" answered Grand-Ferre. "Do you even know what it is to be
a Royalist?"

"Yes," said La Pipe; "I know you all very well. Go, you are for the old
self-called princes of the peace, together with the wranglers against
the Cardinal and the gabelle. Am I right or not?"

"No, old red-stocking. A Royalist is one who is for the King; that's
what it is. And as my father was the King's valet, I am for the King,
you see; and I have no liking for the red-stockings, I can tell you."

"Ah, you call me red-stocking, eh?" answered the old soldier. "You
shall give me satisfaction to-morrow morning. If you had made war in
the Valteline, you would not talk like that; and if you had seen his
Eminence marching upon the dike at Rochelle, with the old Marquis de
Spinola, while volleys of cannonshot were sent after him, you would have
nothing to say about red-stockings."

"Come, let us amuse ourselves, instead of quarrelling," said the other
soldiers.

The men who conversed thus were standing round a great fire, which
illuminated them more than the moon, beautiful as it was; and in the
centre of the group was the object of their gathering and their cries.
The Cardinal perceived a young woman arrayed in black and covered with
a long, white veil. Her feet were bare; a thick cord clasped her elegant
figure; a long rosary fell from her neck almost to her feet, and her
hands, delicate and white as ivory, turned its beads and made them pass
rapidly beneath her fingers. The soldiers, with a barbarous joy, amused
themselves with laying little brands in her way to burn her naked feet.
The oldest took the smoking match of his arquebus, and, approaching it
to the edge of her robe, said in a hoarse voice:

"Come, madcap, tell me your history, or I will fill you with powder and
blow you up like a mine; take care, for I have already played that trick
to others besides you, in the old wars of the Huguenots. Come, sing."

The young woman, looking at him gravely, made no reply, but lowered her
veil.

"You don't manage her well," said Grand-Ferre, with a