colors, the fair dames with their hoods, their
masks, their elaborate coiffures, the crowds in the balconies! All the
celebrities of court might be seen promenading the Place; and to be
identified as one above many was a plume such as all Mazarin's gold
could not buy.

"My faith! but this has been a day," he murmured, gazing wistfully at
his ragged nails. "Till I entered this tub there was nothing but lead
in my veins, nothing but marble on my bones. Look at those boots,
Breton, lad; a spur gone, the soles loose, the heels cracked. And that
cloak! The mud on the skirts is a week old. And that scabbard was new
when I left Paris. When I came up I looked like a swashbuckler in one
of Scudery's plays. I let no one see me. Indeed, I doubt if any would
have recognized me. But a man can not ride from Rome to Paris, after
having ridden from Paris to Rome, changing neither his clothes nor his
horse, without losing some particle of his fastidiousness, and, body of
Bacchus! I have lost no small particle of mine."

"Ah, Monsieur Paul," said the lackey, hiding the cast-off clothing in
the closet, "I am that glad to see you safe and sound again!"

"Your own face is welcome, lad. What weather I have seen!" wringing
his mustache and royal. "And Heaven forfend that another such ride
falls my lot." He smiled at the ruddy heap in the fireplace.

What a ride, indeed! For nearly two weeks he had ridden over hills and
mountains, through valleys and gorges, access deep and shallow streams,
sometimes beneath the sun, sometimes beneath the moon or the stars,
sometimes beneath the flying black canopies of midnight storms, always
and ever toward Paris. He had been harried by straggling Spaniards; he
had drawn his sword three times in unavoidable tavern brawls; he had
been robbed of his purse; he had even pawned his signet-ring for a
night's lodging: all because Mazarin had asked a question which only
the pope could answer.

Paris at last!--Paris the fanciful, the illogical, the changeable, the
wholly delightful Paris! He knew his Paris well, did the Chevalier.
He had been absent thirty days, and on the way in from Fontainebleau,
where he had spent the preceding night at the expense of his
signet-ring, he had wondered what changes had taken place among the
exiles and favorites during this time. What if the Grande Mademoiselle
again headed that comic revolution, the Fronde, as in the old days when
she climbed the walls at Orl