de Luynes!" he said. "I learnt at Canaples
that you were not dead."

"You have been to Canaples?"

"I was a guest of the Chevalier for twelve days. I arrived there on the
day after your departure."

"You!" I ejaculated. "Pray what took you to Canaples?"

"What took me there?" he echoed, turning his feverish eyes upon me,
almost with fierceness. "The same motive that led me to join hands with
that ruffian St. Auban, when he spoke of waging war against Mancini; the
same motive that led me to break with him when I saw through his plans,
and when the abduction of Mademoiselle was on foot; the same motive that
made me come to you and tell you of the proposed abduction so that you
might interfere if you had the power, or cause others to do so if you
had not."

I lay back in my chair and stared at him. Was this, then, another suitor
of Yvonne de Canaples, and were all men mad with love of her?

Presently he continued:

"When I heard that St. Auban was in Paris, having apparently abandoned
all hope in connection with Mademoiselle, I obtained a letter from M. de
la Rochefoucauld--who is an intimate friend of mine--and armed with this
I set out. As luck would have it I got embroiled in the streets of Blois
with a couple of cardinalist gentlemen, who chose to be offended by
lampoon of the Fronde that I was humming. I am not a patient man, and I
am even indiscreet in moments of choler. I ended by crying, 'Down with
Mazarin and all his creatures,' and I would of a certainty have had my
throat slit, had not a slight and elegant gentleman interposed, and,
exercising a wonderful influence over my assailants, extricated me from
my predicament. This gentleman was the Chevalier de Canaples. He was
strangely enough in a mood to be pleased by an anti-cardinalist ditty,
for his rage against Andrea de Mancini--which he took no pains to
conceal--had extended already to the Cardinal, and from morn till night
he did little else but revile the whole Italian brood--as he chose to
dub the Cardinal's family."

I recognised the old knight's weak, vacillating character in this, a
creature of moods that, like the vane on a steeple, turns this way or
that, as the wind blows.

"I crave your patience, M. de Luynes," he continued, "and beg of you
to hear my story so that you may determine whether you will save the
Canaples from the danger that threatens them. I only ask that you
dispatch a reliable messenger to Blois. But hear me out first. In