ed, at first idly, then with my mind.
"Oyez! Oyez!" he cried. "Whereas some evil person, having no fear
of God or of the law before his eyes, has impudently, feloniously,
and treasonably stolen from the Palais Royal, a spaniel, the property
of the Queen-Regent's most excellent Majesty, this is to say, that any
one--rumble--rumble--rumble"--here a passing coach drowned some
sentences--after which I caught--"five hundred crowns, the same to be
paid by Monseigneur the Bishop of Beauvais, President of the Council!"

"And glad to pay it," snarled a voice, quite close to me. I started and
looked up. Two men were talking at a grated window above my head. I
could not see their faces.

"Yet it is a high price for a dog," the other sneered.

"But low for a queen. Yet it will buy her. And this is Richelieu's
France!"

"Was!" the other said pithily. "Well, you know the proverb, my friend.
'A living dog is better than a dead lion.'"

"Ay," his companion rejoined, "but I have a fancy that _that_ dog's name
is spelt neither with an F for Flore--which was the whelp's name, was it
not?--nor a B for Beauvais; nor a C for Conde; but with an M----"

"For Mazarin!" the other answered sharply. "Yes, if he find the dog. But
Beauvais is in possession."

"Rocroy, a hit that counted for Conde shook him; you may be sure of
that."

"Still he is in possession."

"So is my shoe in possession of my foot," was the keen reply. "And
see--I take it off. Beauvais is tottering, I tell you; tottering. It
wants but a shove, and he falls."

I heard no more, for they moved from the window into the room; but they
left me a different man. It was not so much the hope of reward as the
desire for vengeance that urged me; my clerk's wits returned once more,
and in the very desperation of my affairs gave me the courage I
sometimes lacked. I recognized that I had not to do with a King, but a
dog; but that none the less that way lay revenge. And I rose up and
slunk again into the main street and passed through the crowd and up the
Rue St. Martin and by St. Merri, a dirty, ragged, barefoot rascal from
whom people drew their skirts; yes, all that, and the light of the sun
on it--all that, and yet vengeance itself in the body--the hand that
should yet drag my cruel master's _fauteuil_ from under him.

Once I halted, weighing the risks and whether I should take my knowledge
direct to the Cardinal and let him make what use he pleased of it. But I
knew nothing