er any intercourse in early
youth accounted for his undefined sense of remembrance.

He interrogated the first disengaged person he could find, but it was
only the young Abbe de Mericour, who had been newly brought up from
Dauphine by his elder brother to solicit a benefice, and who knew
nobody. To him ladies were only bright phantoms such as his books had
taught him to regard like the temptations of St. Anthony, but whom he
actually saw treated with as free admiration by the ecclesiastic as by
the layman.

Suddenly a clamour of voices arose on the other side of the
closely-clipped wall of limes by which the two youths were walking.
There were the clear tones of a young maiden expostulating in indignant
distress, and the bantering, indolent determination of a male annoyer.

'Hark!' exclaimed Berenger; 'this must be seen to.'

'Have a care,' returned Mericour; 'I have heard that a man needs look
twice are meddling.'

Scarcely hearing, Berenger strode on as he had done at the last village
wake, when he had rescued Cis of the Down from the impertinence of a
Dorchester scrivener. It was a like case, he saw, when breaking
through the arch of clipped limed he beheld the little Demoiselle de
Nid-de-Merle, driven into a corner and standing at bay, with glowing
cheeks, flashing eyes, and hands clasped over her breast, while a young
man, dressed in the extreme of foppery, was assuring her that she was
the only lady who had not granted him a token--that he could not allow
such _pensionnaire_ airs, and that now he had caught her he would have
his revenge, and win her rose-coloured break-knot. Another gentleman
stood by, laughing, and keeping guard in the walk that led to the more
frequented part of the gardens.

'Hold!' thundered Berenger.

The assailant had just mastered the poor girl's hand, but she took
advantage of his surprise to wrench it away and gather herself up as
for a spring, but the Abbe in dismay, the attendant in anger, cried out,
'Stay--it is Monsieur.'

'Monsieur; be he who he may,' exclaimed Berenger, 'no honest man can see
a lady insulted.'

'Are you mad? It is Monsieur the Duke of Anjou,' said Mericour, pouncing
on his arm.

'Shall we have him to the guardhouse?' added the attendant, coming up on
the other side; but Henri de Valois waved them both back, and burst
into a derisive laugh. 'No, no; do you not see who it is? Monsieur the
English Baron still holds the end of the halter. His sale is not ye