zan asked in astonishment.

"No, not quite," Crillon answered dryly. "The rest I will whisper in
your ear as I pass. Only do what I bid you boldly and faithfully, my
friend, and afterwards, if all be well, I will not forget you."

"I am yours! Do with me as you will!" Bazan protested.

But to mortals the unknown is ever terrible; and for twenty-four hours
Bazan had the unknown before him. What could that be from which Crillon
himself said that he shrank--a man so brave? It could not be death, for
that he had risked on the lightest, the flimsiest, the most fantastic
provocation. Then what could it be? Bazan turned the question in his
mind, turned it a hundred times that night, turned it a hundred times as
he went about his preparations next day. Turned it and turned it, but
instinctively, though no injunctions to that effect had been given him,
took care to show himself as little as possible in public, and
especially to shun all places where he might meet those who had been
present at that strange game at Simon's.

A quarter before nine on the next evening, saw him waiting with a
beating heart outside the house in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec. He formed one
of a crowd of lackeys, and linkboys, citizens, apprentices, and chance
passers who had been attracted to the spot by the lights and by the
guards in the royal livery, who already, though the king was not come,
kept the entrance to the courtyard. Bazan pushed himself with some
difficulty into the front rank, and there waited, scanning with feverish
eagerness every one who entered.

Time passed, and no Crillon appeared, though presently a great shouting
along the street proclaimed the approach of the Duke of Guise, and that
nobleman passed slowly in, noting with a falcon's eye the faces of the
bowing throng. He was a man of grand height and imperial front--a great
scar seeming to make the latter more formidable--his smile a trifle
supercilious, his eyes somewhat near one another; and under his glance
Bazan felt for the moment small and mean. A little later, from the talk
of those about him, the young man learned that the king was drawing
near, and Henry's coach, surrounded by a dozen of the Forty-five,
lumbered along the street. It was greeted with comparative coldness,
only those who stood under the guards' eyes performing a careless
salute.

Bazan was no Parisian, though for the present in Paris, and no Leaguer,
though a Roman Catholic; and he forgot his present erran