person who had been in his department on the evening in question was
now to seek, having indeed disappeared from that time. This was the
gipsy-girl, whom La Trape had mentioned, and whose presence in my
household seemed to need the more elucidation the farther I pushed the
inquiry. In the end I had the butler punished, but though my agents
sought the girl through Paris, and even traced her to Meaux, she was
never discovered.

The affair, at the King's instance, was not made public; nevertheless,
it gave him so strong a distaste for the Arsenal that he did not again
visit me, nor use the rooms I had prepared. That later, when the first
impression wore off, he would have done so, is probable; but, alas,
within a few months the malice of his enemies prevailed over my utmost
precautions, and robbed me of the best of masters; strangely enough, as
all the world now knows, at the corner of that very Rue de la
Feronnerie which he had seen in his dream.

XII. AT

FONTAINEBLEAU.

The passion which Henry still felt for Madame de Conde, and which her
flight from the country was far from assuaging, had a great share in
putting him upon the immediate execution of the designs we had so long
prepared. Looking to find in the stir and bustle of a German campaign
that relief of mind which the Court could no longer afford him, he
discovered in the unhoped-for wealth of his treasury an additional
incitement; and now waited only for the opening of spring and the
Queen's coronation to remove the last obstacles that kept him from the
field.

Nevertheless, relying on my assurances that all things were ready, and
persuaded that the more easy he showed himself the less prepared would
he find the enemy, he made no change in his habits; but in March, 1610,
went, as usual, to Fontainebleau, where he diverted himself with
hunting. It was during this visit that the Court credited him with
seeing--I think, on the Friday before the Feast of the Virgin--the
Great Huntsman; and even went so far as to specify the part of the
forest in which he came upon it, and the form--that of a gigantic black
horseman, surrounded by hounds--which it assumed The spectre had not
been seen since the year 1598; nevertheless, the story spread widely,
those who whispered it citing in its support not only the remarkable
agitation into which the Queen fell publicly on the evening of that
day, but also some strange particulars that attended the King's return