God knows, they had no monopoly of gloom. I felt almost as sad
myself. Long before sunset the flush of triumph, the heat of battle,
which had warmed my heart at noon, were gone, giving place to a chill
dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency such as I have known follow
a long night at the tables. Hitherto there had been difficulties to be
overcome, risks to be run, doubts about the end. Now the end was certain
and very near; so near that it filled all the prospect. One hour of
triumph I might have, and would have, and I hugged the thought of it as
a gambler hugs his last stake, planning the place and time and mode, and
trying to occupy myself wholly with it. But the price? Alas! that too
would intrude itself, and more frequently as the evening waned; so that
as I marked this or that thing by the road, which I could recall passing
on my journey south with thoughts so different, with plans that now
seemed so very, very old, I asked myself grimly if this were really I;
if this were Gil de Berault, known at Zaton's, PREMIER JOUEUR, or some
Don Quichotte from Castille, tilting at windmills and taking barbers'
bowls for gold.

We reached Agen very late that evening, after groping our way through
a by-road near the river, set with holes and willow-stools and
frog-spawn--a place no better than a slough; so that after it the great
fires and lights at the Blue Maid seemed like a glimpse of a new world,
and in a twinkling put something of life and spirits into two at least
of us. There was queer talk round the hearth here, of doings in Paris,
of a stir against the Cardinal with the Queen-mother at bottom, and of
grounded expectations that something might this time come of it. But the
landlord pooh-poohed the idea; and I more than agreed with him. Even M.
de Cocheforet, who was at first inclined to build on it, gave up hope
when he heard that it came only by way of Montauban; whence--since its
reduction the year before--all sort of CANARDS against the Cardinal were
always on the wing.

'They kill him about once a month,' our host said with a grin.
'Sometimes it is MONSIEUR is to prove a match for him, sometimes
CESAR MONSIEUR--the Duke of Vendome, you understand--and sometimes the
Queen-mother. But since M. de Chalais and the Marshal made a mess of it
and paid forfeit, I pin my faith to his Eminence--that is his new title,
they tell me.'

'Things are quiet round here?' I asked.

'Perfectly. Since the Languedoc business came to