erhaps."

"What do you mean?" cried both the gentlemen together, "the admiral
removed from this world?"

"What, Monsieur de Coconnas," pursued the landlord, with a shrewd smile,
"are you a friend of the Duc de Guise, and do not know _that_?"

"Know what?"

"That the day before yesterday, as the admiral was passing along the
place Saint Germain l'Auxerrois before the house of the Canon Pierre
Piles, he was fired at"--

"And killed?" said La Mole.

"No; he had his arm broken and two fingers taken off; but it is hoped
the balls were poisoned."

"How, wretch!" cried La Mole; "hoped?"

"Believed, I mean," said the landlord, winking at Coconnas; "do not take
a word too seriously, it was a slip of the tongue."

And Maitre La Huriere, turning his back on La Mole, poked out his tongue
at Coconnas in the most insulting way, accompanying this action with a
meaning wink.

"Really!" said Coconnas, joyfully.

"Really!" said La Mole, with sorrowful stupefaction.

"It is just as I have the honor of telling you, gentlemen," said the
landlord.

"In that case," said La Mole, "I must go instantly to the Louvre. Shall
I find the King of Navarre there?"

"Most likely, since he lives there."

"And I," said Coconnas, "must also go to the Louvre. Shall I find the
Duc de Guise there?"

"Most likely; for only a moment ago I saw him pass with two hundred
gentlemen."

"Come, then, Monsieur de Coconnas," said La Mole.

"I will follow you, sir," replied Coconnas.

"But your supper, gentlemen!" cried La Huriere.

"Ah," said La Mole, "I shall most likely sup with the King of Navarre."

"And I," said Coconnas, "with the Duc de Guise."

"And I," said the landlord, after having watched the two gentlemen on
their way to the Louvre, "I will go and burnish my sallet, put a match
to my arquebuse, and sharpen my partisan, for no one knows what may
happen."

CHAPTER V.

OF THE LOUVRE IN PARTICULAR, AND OF VIRTUE IN GENERAL.

The two young men, directed by the first person they met, went down the
Rue d'Averon, the Rue Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, and soon found
themselves before the Louvre, the towers of which were beginning to be
lost in the early shades of the gloaming.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Coconnas of La Mole, who, as they
came in sight of the old chateau, stopped and gazed, not without awe, on
the drawbridges, the narrow windows, and the pointed belfries, which
suddenly rose before his vision.

"I