jackdaw. "I know, gentlemen."

Oriol stared at him. "You know?"

Noce gave vent to an angry laugh. "The hunchback knows."

While this conversation was going on a group of middle-aged gentlemen had
been moving down the avenue that led to the Pond of Diana. These were the
Baron de la Hunaudaye, Monsieur de Marillac, Monsieur de Barbanchois,
Monsieur de la Ferte, and Monsieur de Vauguyon. They had been taking a
peaceful interest in the spectacle afforded them, had been comparing it
with similar festivities that they recalled in the days of their youth,
and had been enjoying themselves tranquilly enough. Perceiving a group of
young men apparently engaged in animated discussion, the elders quickened
their pace a little to join the party and learn the cause of its
animation.

When they arrived AEsop was speaking. "Something extraordinary is going
on here to-night, Monsieur de Navailles. The king is preoccupied. The
guard is doubled, but no one knows why, not even these gentlemen. But I
know, AEsop the Wise."

"What do you know?" asked Navailles.

AEsop looked at him mockingly. "You would never guess it if you guessed
for a thousand years. It has nothing to do with plots or politics, with
foreign intrigues or domestic difficulties--"

Oriol thirsted for information. "What is it for, then?"

AEsop answered, gravely, with an amazing question: "Gentlemen, do you
believe in ghosts?" And the gravity of his voice and the strangeness of
his question forced his hearers, surprised and uneasy, in spite of
themselves, to laugh disdainfully.

AEsop accepted their laughter composedly. "Of course not. No one believes
in ghosts at noonday, on the crowded street, though perhaps some do at
midnight when the world is over-still. But here, to-night, in all this
glitter and crowd and noise and color, the king is perturbed and the
guards are doubled because of a ghost--the ghost of a man who has been
dead these seventeen years."

The Baron de la Hunaudaye, bluff old soldier of the brave days of the
dawning reign, was interested in the hunchback's words. "Of whom do you
speak?" he asked.

AEsop turned to the new-comers, and addressed them more respectfully than
he had been addressing the partisans of Gonzague: "I speak of a gallant
gentleman--young, brave, beautiful, well-beloved. I speak to men who knew
him. To you, Monsieur de la Hunaudaye, who would now be lying under
Flemish earth if his sword had not slain your assailant; to you,