t child's play!"

"And you will not tell me where it is?" he asked, raging.

"No! Go to your nurse and your pap-boat, child."

He flew at me at that like a mad cat, and I had to beat him until the
blood ran down his face before I could shake him off. Even then, and
while I thrust him out sobbing, he begged me to tell him--only to tell
him. Nor was that all. Through all the next day he haunted me and
persecuted me, now with prayers and now with threats; following me
everywhere with eyes of such hot longing that I marvelled at the
irrepressible spirit that shone in the lad.

Of course I told him nothing. Yet I was glad when the next day came, and
with it an announcement that Henry would visit M. de Gourdon and lie
that night at his house, four miles from Montauban, where the court then
was. Only eight gentlemen were invited to be of the party, with as many
ladies; the troop with a handful of servants riding out of the city
about five o'clock, and no one the wiser. No one saw anything odd in
the visit, nor in my being chosen to attend the King. But I knew; and I
was not surprised when we stopped at M. de Gourdon's only to sup, and
then getting to horse, rode through the night and the dusky oak woods,
by walled farms and hamlets, and under rustling poplars--rode many
leagues, and forded many streams. The night was hot, it was the month of
June; and it thundered continually, but with no rain. At this point and
that bands of men joined us, mysteriously, and in silence; until from
the hill with its bracken and walnut trees, we saw the lights of Cahors
below us, and the glimmer of the winding Lot, and heard the bells of the
city tolling midnight.

By this time, every road adding to our numbers, we were a great company;
and how we lay hidden through the early night in the walnut grove that
looks down on the river all men know; but not the qualms and eagerness
that by turns possessed me as I peered through the leaves at the distant
lights, nor the prayer I said that I might not shame my race, nor how my
heart beat when Henry, who was that day twenty-seven years old, gave the
order to advance in the voice of one going to a ball. Two men with a
petard--then a strange invention--led the way through the gloom,
attended by ten picked soldiers. After them came fifty of the King's
guards, and the King with two hundred foot; then the main body of a
thousand. We had the long bridge with its three gates to pass; and
beyond these obsta