note from his breast. It had been
slipped into his hand in the gallery before he saw Mademoiselle to her
lodging; it had been in his possession barely an hour. But brief as its
contents were, and easily committed to memory, he had perused it thrice
already.

"At the house next the Golden Maid, Rue Cinq Diamants, an hour before
midnight, you may find the door open should you desire to talk farther
with C. St. L."

As he read it for the fourth time the light of the lamp fell athwart his
face; and even as his fine clothes had never seemed to fit him worse than
when he faintly denied the imputations of gallantry launched at him by
Nancay, so his features had never looked less handsome than they did now.
The glow of vanity which warmed his cheek as he read the message, the
smile of conceit which wreathed his lips, bespoke a nature not of the
most noble; or the lamp did him less than justice. Presently he kissed
the note, and hid it. He waited until the clock of St. Jacques struck
the hour before midnight; and then moving forward, he turned to the right
by way of the narrow neck leading to the Rue Lombard. He walked in the
kennel here, his sword in his hand and his eyes looking to right and
left; for the place was notorious for robberies. But though he saw more
than one figure lurking in a doorway or under the arch that led to a
passage, it vanished on his nearer approach. In less than a minute he
reached the southern end of the street that bore the odd title of the
Five Diamonds.

Situate in the crowded quarter of the butchers, and almost in the shadow
of their famous church, this street--which farther north was continued in
the Rue Quimcampoix--presented in those days a not uncommon mingling of
poverty and wealth. On one side of the street a row of lofty gabled
houses, built under Francis the First, sheltered persons of good
condition; on the other, divided from these by the width of the road and
a reeking kennel, a row of peat-houses, the hovels of cobblers and
sausage-makers, leaned against shapeless timber houses which tottered
upwards in a medley of sagging roofs and bulging gutters. Tignonville
was strange to the place, and nine nights out of ten he would have been
at a disadvantage. But, thanks to the tapers that to-night shone in many
windows, he made out enough to see that he need search only the one side;
and with a beating heart he passed along the row of newer houses, looking
eagerly for the sign of