The Justice of the King

All morning the King had been restless, unappeasable, captious, with little relapses unto the immobility of deep thought, and those who knew him best were probing deeply both th...

Passing his clenched hand through the crook of Commines' arm, and leaning heavily on the stick in the other hand, Louis turned slowly up the gallery, and for a time both were si...

With a quick gesture, the arm thrust out, the hand open, the fingers spread, Louis shrank back, his other arm across his face. It was a movement eloquent of pathos, despair, and...

As Commines crossed the courtyard to his lodgings his face was puckered with anxious thought. Many a time he had fished for his master in waters both foul and troubled, but alwa...

If proof were needed of the King's unique trust in his Grand Marshal it was to be found in the ease with which Tristan conveyed La Mothe past the sentries who stood guard at eve...

La Mothe sat silent. His fear had passed away utterly, but in its place his awe had grown, an awe full of a deep pity. Youth is the true age of intolerance and for the simple re...

Many, deep, and diverse are the springs of silence. If Commines asked no question when La Mothe returned from his interview with Louis, and made no comment beyond "You are late,...

Blessed four-and-twenty. From the first breath of life until the last, even though by reason of strength there be four-score years, is there a more perfect age? The restraints o...

The gallows-cheat, the human pitch whose very touch is defilement was what was in his mind, but with those clear luminous eyes looking down unashamed into his own he could not p...

Charles was seated on a low stool at the further end of the room, a pale-faced boy with dull, peevish eyes closely set together, the long Valois nose, and a thin, obstinate mout...

Two or three adroit questions addressed to the servant who showed him to his sleeping-quarters gave La Mothe a sufficient clue to the whereabouts of Commines' lodgings. That the...

But having ended the sentence Commines broke off at the end as La Mothe had done in the middle, and with much the same embarrassment. His face, harsh and stern of feature both b...

With his overnight's irritation still unallayed, and more than ever convinced that the prejudice which could so misread Mademoiselle de Vesc must also wrong Francois Villon, La...

Slipping his foot back into the stirrup the Dauphin mechanically closed his knees, as a rider does to renew his grip after it has been relaxed. But with the tightening of the gr...

Never was the cynical philosophy of the proverb, Virtue is its own reward, made more clear than in the indifference with which Amboise greeted the rescue of the Dauphin. Of cour...

"And you were wrong," answered La Mothe. "I am only ten days in Amboise, ten days which seem like so many hours, and already Charles trusts me as he trusts Mademoiselle de Vesc."

Only the very foolish or the very weak man seeks to hide from his own soul the full, naked, unpalatable truth about himself. The fool follows the principle which governs the lib...

Before the coming of the Maid, that is to say more than fifty years before Stephen La Mothe gave himself the heartache over his misreadings of the most read chapter in the book...

But meanwhile there was a pause. Below, in the defenceless doorway, Hugues and La Mothe stood shoulder to shoulder for one of those fiery instants which try a man's nerve rather...

Below the attack halted, but up the stairway came the noise of rough laughter and rougher words, words which made Stephen La Mothe's blood grow hot and his nerves tingle as, gri...

"It was an epic," said Villon, "a veritable epic, and if you were truly the Homer I called you half the towns in France would claim you for a citizen. As it is you have only bee...

But while Stephen La Mothe still hesitated Commines took action. He recognized that sooner or later there must be a confronting. Ursula de Vesc, however deeply implicated, was n...

"Say to Mademoiselle de Vesc that Monsieur d'Argenton requires to speak with her in the Hercules room." It was the Judge who spoke. Already Commines stood in Louis' place to sea...

At the appeal La Mothe's grip upon the chair grew more tense, and his hand so shook that the whole chair was shaken as he felt the girl stiffen against his knuckles. What his ho...

This time no one broke the silence, and for a little space the quiet was like the reverent stillness of a death-chamber. The awe inseparable from sudden death possessed them. An...

Respect kept La Mothe silent. How could he say bluntly, 'You owe everything you possess in the world to the man who is dead--position, title, office, wealth. Are these forgotten...

For once in his career Phillip de Commines, ambassador and diplomatist, was well pleased to have failed, or rather, paradoxically, he told himself that failure was his true succ...

"An innkeeper? Innkeepers are decent folk. Travellers trust them nightly with their property, with their lives even. There is no discredit in innkeeping. You know, Monsieur d'Ar...

For men there is no such ladder to place and fame as their fellow-men. Over their crushed and trampled backs, or with a hand in their pocket, ambition or greed can climb to heig...

"Blessed be the man who first invented sleep," said the wise Spaniard. And yet there are times when even a sleepless night can leave a light heart behind it. For the first time...

"There was a time," said Villon, "when I, too, could forget that rose arches are open at the ends. The world is always gaping at our elbow. If we taste a peach in an orchard, th...

Partly to divert the boy from his grief at Hugues' death, but partly also as an outlet for her new-found lightness of heart, Ursula de Vesc would have turned what Villon insiste...

There was no long delay. Passing Villon with a single, keen, scrutinizing glance, a man, a stranger to them all, entered, pausing a yard or two within the room. Four or five tro...

But for two happenings by the way Stephen La Mothe's ride over the route taken twenty-four hours earlier by Commines was without event. Of these happenings one was bitter and on...

While they were still a bow-shot from the walls a hoarse voice shouted a command to halt, but Molembrais, holding the signet above his head, called back "In the King's name," an...