young, And erring, and in nothing more astray Than in
this marriage.--TAYLOR, EDWIN THE FAIR.

Nothing could be kinder than the Ambassador's family, and Philip found
himself at once at home there, at least in his brother's room, which
was all the world to him. fortunately, Ambroise Pare, the most skillful
surgeon of his day, had stolen a day from his attendance of King
Charles, at St. Germain, to visit his Paris patients, and, though
unwilling to add to the list of cases, when he heard from Walsingham's
secretary who the suffer was, and when injured, he came at once to
afford his aid.

He found, however, that there was little scope for present treatment,
he could only set his chief assistant to watch the patient and to inform
him when the crisis should be nearer; but remarking the uneasy, anxious
expression in Berenger's eyes, he desired to know whether any care
on his mind might be interfering with his recovery. A Huguenot, and
perfectly trustworthy, he was one who Walsingham knew might safely hear
the whole, and after hearing all, he at once returned to his patient,
and leaning over him, said, 'Vex not yourself, sir; your illness is
probably serving you better than health could do.'

Sir Francis thought this quite probable, since Charles was so unwell
and so beset with his mother's creatures that no open audience could
be obtained from him, and Pare, who always had access to him, might act
when no one else could reach him. Meantime the Ambassador rejoiced to
hear of the instinctive caution that had made Berenger silence Philip on
the object of the journey to Paris, since if the hostile family guessed
at the residence of the poor infant, they would have full opportunity
for obliterating all the scanty traces of her. Poor persecuted little
thing! the uncertain hope of her existence seemed really the only thread
that still bound Berenger to life. He had spent eighteen months in
hope deferred, and constant bodily pain; and when the frightful
disappointment met him at La Sablerie, it was not wonder that his heart
and hope seemed buried in the black scorched ruins where all he cared
for had perished. He was scarcely nineteen, but the life before him
seemed full of nothing but one ghastly recollection, and, as he said in
the short sad little letter which he wrote to his grandfather from his
bed, he only desired to live long enough to save Eustacie's child from
being a nameless orphan maintained for charity in a convent,