into its shelter from the
fading sunlight outside. A window was open to let in what little air was
stirring, and from that window a spectator with a good head might look
down a sheer drop of more than thirty feet into the moat of the Castle of
Caylus. The Inn of the Seven Devils was perched on the lip of one rock,
and Caylus Castle on the lip of another. Between the two lay the gorge,
which had been partially utilized to form the moat of the castle, and
which continued its way towards the Spanish mountains. Beyond the castle
a bridge spanned the ravine, carrying on the road towards the frontier.
The moat itself was dry now, for war and Caylus had long been
disassociated, and France was, for the moment, at peace with her
neighbor, if at peace with few other powers. A young thirteenth Louis, a
son of the great fourth Henri, now sat upon the throne of France, and
seemingly believed himself to be the ruler of his kingdom, though a newly
made Cardinal de Richelieu held a different opinion, and acted according
to his conviction with great pertinacity and skill.

Inside the Inn of the Seven Devils, on this heavy day of early autumn,
seven men were sitting. It was an odd chance, and the men had joked about
it heavily--there was one man for each devil of the Inn's name. Six of
these men were grouped about a table furnished with flagons and beakers,
and were doing their best to alleviate the external heat by copious
draughts of the rough but not unkindly native wine which Martine, the
plain-faced maid of the Inn, dispensed generously enough from a ruddy
earthenware pitcher. A stranger entering the room would, at the first
glance, have taken the six men seated around the table for soldiers, for
all were stalwart fellows, with broad bodies and long limbs, bronzed
faces and swaggering carriage, and behind them where they sat six great
rapiers dangled from nails in the wall, rapiers which the revellers had
removed from their sides for their greater ease and comfort. But if the
suppositious stranger were led to study the men a little more closely, he
would be tempted to correct his first impression. The swaggering carriage
of the men lacked something of the stiffness inevitably to be associated
with military training in the days when the levies of the Sun-King were
held, or at least held themselves to be, the finest troops in Europe, a
cheerful opinion which no amount of military misfortune could dissipate.

Each of the drinkers of th