down on some hundreds of red-tiled roofs, rising in
terraces from the river. As the meeting-place of the two sovereigns it
was for the time as gay as Paris itself. Catherine had brought with her
a bevy of fair maids of honour, and trusted more perhaps in the effect
of their charms than in her own diplomacy. But the peaceful appearance
of the town was as delusive as the smooth bosom of the Gironde; for even
while every other house in its streets rang with music and silvery
laughter, each party was ready to fly to arms at a word if it saw that
any advantage could be gained thereby.

On an evening shortly before the end of the conference two men were
seated at play in a room, the deep-embrasured window of which looked
down from a considerable height upon the river. The hour was late; below
them the town lay silent. Outside, the moonlight fell bright and pure on
sleeping fields, on vineyards, and dark far-spreading woods. Within the
room a silver lamp suspended from the ceiling threw light upon the
table, but left the farther parts of the chamber in shadow. The walls
were hung with faded tapestry, and on a low bedstead in one corner lay a
handsome cloak, a sword, and one of the clumsy pistols of the period.
Across a high-backed chair lay another cloak and sword, and on the
window seat, beside a pair of saddle-bags, were strewn half a dozen
trifles such as soldiers carried from camp to camp--a silver comfit-box,
a jewelled dagger, a mask, a velvet cap.

The faces of the players, as they bent over the cards, were in shadow.
One--a slight, dark man of middle height, with a weak chin--and a mouth
that would have equally betrayed its weakness had it not been shaded by
a dark moustache--seemed, from the occasional oaths which he let drop,
to be losing heavily. Yet his opponent, a stouter and darker man, with a
sword-cut across his left temple, and the swaggering air that has at all
times marked the professional soldier, showed no signs of triumph or
elation. On the contrary, though he kept silence, or spoke only a formal
word or two, there was a gleam of anxiety and suppressed excitement in
his eyes; and more than once he looked keenly at his companion, as if to
judge of his feelings or to learn whether the time had come for some
experiment which he meditated. But for this, an observer looking in
through the window would have taken the two for that common
conjunction--the hawk and the pigeon.

At last the younger player threw