to you
so that you might lead him into the dissolute habits which have dragged
you down to what you are--to what you were before I rescued you--to what
you will be to-morrow when I shall have again abandoned you?"

"Hear me, your Eminence!" I cried indignantly. "'T is no fault of mine.
Some fool hath sent M. de Mancini a basket of wine and--"

"And you showed him how to abuse it," he broke in harshly. "You have
taught the boy to become a sot; in time, were he to remain under your
guidance, I make no doubt but that he would become a gamester and a
duellist as well. I was mad, perchance, to give him into your care; but
I have the good fortune to be still in time, before the mischief has
sunk farther, to withdraw him from it, and to cast you back into the
kennel from which I picked you."

"Your Eminence does not mean--"

"As God lives I do!" he cried. "You shall quit the Palais Royal this
very night, M. de Luynes, and if ever I find you unbidden within half a
mile of it, I will do that which out of a misguided sense of compassion
I do not do now--I will have you flung into an oubliette of the
Bastille, where better men than you have rotted before to-day. Per Dio!
do you think that I am to be fooled by such a thing as you?"

"Does your Eminence dismiss me?" I cried aghast, and scarce crediting
that such was indeed the extreme measure upon which he had determined.

"Have I not been plain enough?" he answered with a snarl.

I realised to the full my unenviable position, and with the realisation
of it there overcame me the recklessness of him who has played his last
stake at the tables and lost. That recklessness it was that caused me to
shrug my shoulders with a laugh. I was a soldier of fortune--or should I
say a soldier of misfortune?--as rich in vice as I was poor in virtue;
a man who lived by the steel and parried the blows that came as best he
might, or parried them not at all--but never quailed.

"As your Eminence pleases," I answered coolly, "albeit methinks that for
one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little
clemency were not unfitting."

He raised his eyebrows, and his lips curled in a malicious sneer.

"You come of a family, M. de Luynes," he said slowly, "that is famed for
having shed the blood of others for France more freely than its own.
You are, I believe, the nephew of Albert de Luynes. Do you forget the
Marshal d'Ancre?"

I felt the blood of anger hot in my face as I