stute vicomte, that diplomat?"

"Even so. The Vicomte d'Halluys, wit, duelist, devil-may-care,
spendthrift. Ho, Vicomte!" the poet called.

"Saumaise?" cried the man at the door, coming forward.

"Go in, Paul," said the poet; "I want a word with him."

The Chevalier passed into the private assembly. The vicomte and the
poet looked into each other's eyes for a moment. The vicomte slapped
his thigh and laughed.

"Hang me from a gargoyle on Notre Dame," he broke forth, "if it isn't
the poet!"

"The same," less hilariously.

"I thought you had gone to Holland?"

"I can talk Spanish," replied Victor, "but not a word of Dutch. And
you? Is it Spain?"

"Nay; when the time comes I'm for New France. I have some property
there; a fine excuse to see it. What a joke! How well it will read in
Monsieur Somebody's memoirs! What is new?"

"Mazarin has not yet come into possession of that paper. Beaufort will
see to that, so far as it lies in his power. I am all at sea."

"And I soon shall be! Come on, then. We are making a night of it."
And the vicomte caught the poet by the arm and dragged him into the
private assembly.

Around a huge silver bowl sat a company of roisterers, all flushed with
wine and the attendant false happiness. Long clay pipes clouded the
candle-light; there was the jingle of gold and the purr of shuffling
cards; and here and there were some given to the voicing of ribald
songs. To Victor this was no uncommon scene; and it was not long
before he had thrown himself with gay enthusiasm into this mad carouse.

Shortly after the door had closed upon the company of merry-makers and
their loud voices had resolved into untranslatable murmurs, three men
came into the public room and ranged themselves in front of the fire.
The close fitting, long black cassocks, the wide-brimmed hats looped up
at the sides, proclaimed two of them to belong to the Society of Jesus.
The third, his body clothed in nondescript skins and furs, his feet in
beaded moccasins, his head hatless and the coarse black hair adorned
with a solitary feather from a heron's wing and glistening with melting
snow, the color of his skin unburnished copper, his eyes black, fierce,
restless,--all these marked the savage of the New World. Potboys,
grooms, and guests all craned their necks to get a glimpse of this
strange and formidable being of whom they had heard such stories as
curdled the blood and filled the night with troubled