you will find a market-boat starting for Rouen.
Go by it, and at the Ecce Homo in the Rue St. Eloi in that city you will
find your wife and a hundred crowns. Live there quietly, and in a month
apply for work at the Chancery; it will be given you. The rest lies with
you. I have known men," he continued, with a puzzling smile, "who
started at a desk in that Chancery and, being very silent men, able to
keep a secret--able to keep a secret, mark you--lived to rent one of the
great farms."

I tried to find words to thank him.

"There is no need," he said. "For what you have done, it is too much.
For what you have to do--rule the unruly member--it is no more than is
right."

And now I agree with him. Now--though his words came true to the letter,
and to-day I hold one of the great farms on a second term--I too think
that it was no more than was right. For if M. de Conde won Rocroy for
his side in the field, the Cardinal on that day won a victory no less
eminent at court; of which victory the check administered to M. de
Beauvais--who had nothing but a good presence, and collapsing like a
pricked bladder, became within a month the most discredited of men--was
the first movement. Within a month the heads of the Importants--so, I
have said, the Bishop's party were christened--were in prison or exiled
or purchased; and all France knew that it lay in a master's hand--knew
that the mantle of Richelieu, with a double portion of the royal favour,
had fallen on Mazarin's shoulders. I need scarcely add that, before that
fact became known to all--for such things do not become certainties in a
minute--his Eminence had been happy enough to find the true Flore and
restore it to her Majesty's arms.

CRILLON'S STAKE.

On a certain wet night, in the spring of the year 1587, the rain was
doing its utmost to sweeten the streets of old Paris: the kennels were
aflood with it, and the March wind, which caused the crowded sign-boards
to creak and groan on their bearings, and ever and anon closed a shutter
with the sound of a pistol-shot, blew the downpour in sheets into
exposed doorways, and drenched to the skin the few wayfarers who were
abroad. Here and there a stray dog, bent over a bone, slunk away at the
approach of a roisterer's footstep; more rarely a passenger, whose sober
or stealthy gait whispered of business rather than pleasure, moved
cowering from street to street, under such shelter as came in his way.

About two hours b