me, lest the
closet be found empty. But a whine, that grew into a long and melancholy
howl, greeted us on the threshold of the room whither I led them; and
the closet door being forced, in a trice the dog was out and amongst us.

Monseigneur clapped his hands and swore freely. "_Dieu benisse!_" he
cried. "It is the dog, sure enough! Here, Flore! Flore!" And as the dog
jumped on us and licked his hand, he turned to me. "Lucky for you,
rascal!" he cried, in great good humour. "There shall be fifty crowns in
your pocket, and your desk again!"

I gasped. "But the reward, Monseigneur?" I stammered. "The five hundred
crowns?"

He bent his black eyebrows. "Reward? Reward, villain?" he thundered. "Do
I hear aright? Is it not enough that I spare you the gallows you richly
earned but yesterday by assaulting my servant? Reward? For what do I pay
you wages, do you think, except to do my work? Are you not my servant?
Go and hang yourself! Or rather," he continued grimly, "stir at your
peril. Look to him, Bonnivet, he is a rogue in grain; and bring him with
me to the Queen's ante-chamber, Her Majesty may desire to ask him
questions, and if he answer them well and handsomely, good! He shall
have the fifty crowns I promised him. If not--I shall know how to deal
with him."

At that, and the mean treachery of his conduct, I fell into my old rage
again, and even his servants looked oddly at him, until a sharp word
recalled them to their duty; on which they hustled me off with little
ceremony, and the less for that which they had before showed me. While
the Bishop, carrying the dog in his arms, mounted his coach and went by
the Rue St. Martin and the Lombards, they hurried me by short cuts and
byways to the Palais Royal, which we reached as his running footman came
in sight. The approach to the gate was blocked by a great crowd of
people, and for a moment I was fond enough to imagine that they had to
do with our affair--and I shrank back. But the steward, with a thrust of
his knee against my hip, which showed me that he had not forgotten my
assault upon him, urged me forward, and from what passed round me as we
pushed through the press, I gathered that a score of captured colours
had arrived from Flanders within the hour, and were about to be
presented to the Queen.

The courtyard confirmed this, for in the open part of it, and much
pressed upon by the curious who thronged the arcades, we found a troop
of horse, plumed and dusty and