THE VALOIS SAGA: Queen Margot, Chicot de Jester & The Forty-Five Guardsmen (Historical Novels). Alexandre Dumas

      A woman wrapped in a long cloak trimmed with fur, accompanied by an attendant, came out of the door which was held open by a duenna of forty, and hurrying rapidly along to the Rue Roi de Sicile, knocked at a small door of the Hôtel Argenson, which opened for her; she then left by the main entrance of the same hôtel which opened on to the Vieille Rue du Temple, went toward a small postern in the Hôtel de Guise, unlocked it with a key which she carried in her pocket, and disappeared.

      Half an hour later a young man with bandaged eyes left by the same door of the small house, guided by a woman who led him to the corner of the Rue Geoffroy Lasnier and La Mortellerie. There she asked him to count fifty steps and then remove his bandage.

      The young man carefully obeyed the order, and when he had counted fifty, removed the handkerchief from his eyes.

      “By Heaven!” cried he, looking around. “I’ll be hanged if I know where I am! Six o’clock!” he cried, as the clock of Notre–Dame struck, “and poor La Mole, what can have become of him? Let us run to the Louvre, perhaps they may have news of him there.”

      Coconnas hurriedly descended the Rue La Mortellerie, and reached the gates of the Louvre in less time than it would have taken an ordinary horse. As he went he jostled and knocked down the moving hedge of brave bourgeois who were walking peacefully about the shops of the Place de Baudoyer, and entered the palace.

      There he questioned the Swiss and the sentinel. The former thought they had seen Monsieur de la Mole enter that morning, but had not seen him go out.

      The sentinel had been there only an hour and a half and had seen nothing.

      He ran to his room and hastily threw open the door; but he found only the torn doublet of La Mole on the bed, which increased his fears still more.

      Then he thought of La Hurière and hastened to the worthy inn of the Belle Étoile. La Hurière had seen La Mole; La Mole had breakfasted there. Coconnas was thus wholly reassured, and as he was very hungry he ordered supper.

      Coconnas was in the two moods necessary for a good supper — his mind was relieved and his stomach was empty; therefore he supped so well that the meal lasted till eight o’clock. Then strengthened by two bottles of light wine from Anjou, of which he was very fond and which he tossed off with a sensual enjoyment shown by winks of his eyes and repeated smacking of his lips, he set out again in his search for La Mole, accompanying it through the crowd by kicks and knocks of his feet in proportion to the increasing friendship inspired in him by the comfort which always follows a good meal.

      That lasted one hour, during which time Coconnas searched every street in the vicinity of the Quay of the Grève, the Port au Charbon, the Rue Saint Antoine, and the Rues Tizon and Cloche Percée, to which he thought his friend might have returned. Finally he bethought himself that there was a place through which he had to pass, the gate of the Louvre, and he resolved to wait at this gate until his return.

      He was not more than a hundred steps from the Louvre, and had just put on her feet a woman whose husband he had already overturned on the Place Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, when in the distance he perceived before him in the doubtful light of a great lantern near the drawbridge of the Louvre the cherry-colored velvet cloak and the white plume of his friend, who like a shadow was disappearing under the gate and returning the sentinel’s greeting.

      The famous cherry-colored cloak was so well known to every one that he could not be mistaken in it.

      “Well! by Heaven!” cried Coconnas; “it is really he this time, and he is returning. Well! well! La Mole, my friend! Plague it! Yet I have a good voice. How does it happen that he does not hear me? Fortunately I have as good legs as I have voice, so I will join him.”

      In this hope Coconnas set out as fast as he could, and reached the Louvre in an instant, but, fast as he was, just as he stepped into the court the red cloak, which seemed in haste also, disappeared in the vestibule.

      “Hi there! La Mole!” cried Coconnas, still hastening. “Wait for me. It is I, Coconnas. What in the devil are you hurrying so for? Are you running away?”

      In fact the red cloak, as though it had wings, scaled the stairs rather than mounted them.

      “Ah! you will not hear me!” cried Coconnas. “I am angry with you! Are you sorry? Well, the devil! I can run no further.” It was from the foot of the staircase that Coconnas hurled this final apostrophe to the fugitive whom he gave up following with his feet, but whom he still followed with his eyes through the screw of the stairway, and who had reached Marguerite’s chamber. Suddenly a woman came out of this room and took the arm of the man Coconnas was following.

      “Oh! oh!” said Coconnas, “that looked very much like Queen Marguerite. He was expected. In that case it is different. I understand why he did not answer me.”

      Crouching down by the banister he looked through the opening of the stairway. Then after a few words in a low voice he saw the red cloak follow the queen to her apartments.

      “Good! good!” said Coconnas, “that is it. I was not mistaken. There are moments when the presence of our best friend is necessary to us, and dear La Mole has one of those moments.”

      And Coconnas ascending the stairs softly sat down on a velvet bench which ornamented the landing place, and said to himself:

      “Very well, instead of joining him I will wait — yes; but,” he added, “I think as he is with the Queen of Navarre I may have to wait long — it is cold, by Heaven! Well! well! I can wait just as well in my room. He will have to come there sometime.”

      Scarcely had he finished speaking, and started to carry out his resolution, when a quick light step sounded above him, accompanied by a snatch of song so familiar that Coconnas at once turned his head in the direction of the step and the song. It was La Mole descending from the upper story, where his room was. When he perceived Coconnas, he began to descend the stairs four steps at a time, and this done he threw himself into his arms.

      “Oh, Heavens! is it you?” said Coconnas. “How the devil did you get out?”

      “By the Rue Cloche Percée, by Heavens!”

      “No, I do not mean that house.”

      “What then?”

      “The queen’s apartment.”

      “The queen’s apartment?”

      “The Queen of Navarre.”

      “I have not been there.”

      “Come now!”

      “My dear Annibal,” said La Mole, “you are out of your head. I have come from my room where I have been waiting for you for two hours.”

      “You have come from your room?”

      “Yes.”

      “Was it not you I followed from the Place du Louvre?”

      “When?”

      “Just now.”

      “No.”

      “It was not you who disappeared under the gate ten minutes ago?”

      “No.”

      “It was not you who just ascended the stairs as if you were pursued by a legion of devils?”

      “No.”

      “By Heaven!” cried Coconnas, “the wine of the Belle Étoile is not poor enough to have so completely turned my head. I tell you that I have just seen your cherry-colored cloak and your white plume under the gate of the Louvre, that I followed both to the foot of the stairway, and that your cloak, your plume, everything, to your swinging arm, was expected here by a lady whom I greatly suspect to be the Queen of Navarre, and who led you through that door, which, unless I am mistaken, is that of the beautiful Marguerite.”

      “By Heaven!” cried La Mole, growing pale, “could there be treason?”

      “Very