The King's Scapegoat

In Poictiers, it will be remembered, much was to happen. There Mademoiselle de Narbonne was to leave me behind in hiding while she rode on to Plessis to gain the King's ear thro...

But let it not be supposed that we trusted entirely to Jean Volran's oath; those who served Louis' court of honour too easily found absolution for vows broken in the King's inte...

Argenton! That was strange, so strange that I started on my stool at the end of the table, and half rose. Of course they were passwords, but why Argenton? Argenton was the lords...

Of the many thoughts that danced across the darkness of my mind, thoughts as impotent of light as fireflies flashing through a summer's gloom, one alone brought any satisfaction...

Though Monsieur de Commines travelled, as he said, on the King's service--a service which, I have since concluded, had it been known, might have cost him his head--he travelled...

"Full," said he, opening the door an inch or two in reply to my third knock, though the blankness of the dark upper windows gave him the lie. "Go elsewhere, my fine fellow, and...

By the provost's lantern we were able to count losses. Martin had a cut upon the forehead which, dribbling down by the corner of his mouth, gave him a pitiful appearance, but me...

Before ever I had set foot in Plessis I had been warned that Louis was a man of many moods, many contradictions. Some of these sides of character I had already seen, but now a n...

"There is no need for haste," said she. "Consider for yourself; truly there is no haste. Jean Volran, once his blood is cool, will kill no horses riding to tell his master your...

I have studied boys as well as men, and from his confusion I guessed his mind was burdened by more than he had delivered. At the question, his face flushed red in the sunlight,...

To every man they come, sooner or later, these second days of birth in which at last he knows himself to be truly alive and with a purpose in the world. In some the ushering int...

"Bah! Catch fortune as she flies. Besides, silks and satins would not become the man who files a wolf's bars to save the King's life, and then hunts the brutes back to their cag...

"But, Monsieur, the roads are free to all; only," and turning on the midway landing of the stairs up which I followed her, leaving Martin and the landlord to care for the horses...

My intention was to ask Jean Volran for an empty room in which to examine the King's letter, and at the foot of the stair I found him waiting. But it was not the Jean Volran I h...

That, of course, was Monsieur de Commines' doing. He had said, Give me seven days; but he took no more than one, and added to the favour of haste the grace of coming himself to...

But once across the Cher the pace quickened, and on every flat and down every slope, we tore at a gallop. The road was good, smooth, broad and hard, Louis and _corvée_ had seen...

"What you desired! Who comes to Plessis to do what he desires? And remember this, my friend, there is no turning back from the King's plough. But to tell you the truth, it is no...

It has been said that the first third of a man's life is the sowing, the second the growing, and the last the mowing, but with seedtime this story has nothing to do. The first m...

I have always been uncertain whether or not the task, as he phrased it, which ultimately became mine, was already taking form in Monsieur de Commines' mind. His attitude of inci...

Now it will be understood why, for the sake of those who are to come after me, it is necessary to write this vindication. Men, not knowing the whole truth, have called me coward...

To decide where my part of the story begins is the difficulty. A chain swung across a gulf from a staple fixed into a rock has a strain put upon it at a certain link; does the s...

That very night, when Mademoiselle came to announce that the child Gaston was more shaken than hurt, she turned at the door with one of those humble curtseys that were to me so...

Of all the virtues that adorn mankind, none is so common as the virtue of necessity--or so little sought after. By reason of that virtue, and because a slender purse is a great...

"Go thou upstairs and wait, boy," he said curtly; then, closing the door, came forward with both hands outstretched, but in appeal rather than welcome. "Mademoiselle de Narbonne...

When, out of his experience, the devil formed schools to teach apt humanity, he set them in the extremes of life, the noisome dens of packed cities and the courts of kings. Mise...

My first dismayed instinct was to pull Roland back upon his haunches, my second to urge him through the wood by the shortest path he could find. But Martin called me back.

There were four of us, then, who rode through the whin brakes, under the pines and out upon the rocks beyond. Indeed, there were six, for Hugues and the big Spanish fellow they...

If ever there had been a doubt of the scoundrel's treacherous purpose there was none now and, the beasts being at last fed, and he gone, it was with a humbled heart I slipped fr...

At what length, and in what terms, Monsieur de Commines berated me I need say little. Those who know his command of vigorous language may judge, but had his tongue been a birch...

Next morning it was easy to find an excuse for taking Martin with us: Ninus needed exercise; it might be necessary to send a messenger to Monsieur de Commines--any tale was suff...

What the priest said I do not know, for he spoke in patois, but the grip on my wrists and arms relaxed--reluctantly, I thought, as if it was a pity to lose so excellent an oppor...

"Now that we have the blessing of God we may go on," said Louis, biting his fingernails so closely that the beginnings of what he had next to say were mumbled through a hand upo...

How the hours of that day passed I cannot tell. They crawled, that was when I sat listening for the footfall of the King's messenger who never came; they flew, that was when I t...

Of the many ways, worthy or vile, honourable or ignoble, whereby men, as my excellent friend the Prince de Talmont has shown in his history, may rise to court favour, few, I thi...