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Updated: June 5, 2025
Towards the autumn of 1601, when the affair of M. de Biron, which was so soon to fill the mouths of the vulgar, was already much in the minds of those whom the King honoured with his confidence, I was one day leaving the hall at the Arsenal, after giving audience to such as wished to see me, when Maignan came after me and detained me; reporting that a gentleman who had attended early, but had later gone into the garden, was still in waiting.
"And the salt is for a bath for his feet, is it?" The woman nodded. "Well," I said, as Maignan came in with my saddlebags and laid them on the floor, "he will swear still louder when he gets the bill, I should think." "Bill?" the housewife answered bitterly, looking up again from her pots. "A tax-gatherer's bill?
As it was, the remark was unfortunate, for M. de Rosny was still in the act of reining back when Maignan called out to us to say we were being followed. I looked behind, but could see nothing except gloom and rain and overhanging eaves and a few figures cowering in doorways. The servants, however, continued to maintain that it was so, and we held, without actually stopping, a council of war.
Our consultation came to nothing, for no better course suggested itself than to go as we had intended to the lodging commonly used by my companion. We did so, looking behind us often, and saying more than once that Maignan must be mistaken.
These two facts seemed so strange that I was beginning to augur the worst, though I scarcely know why, when my spirits were marvellously raised and my fears relieved by a thing which Maignan, who was the first to notice it, pointed out to me. This was the appearance at an upper window of a white 'kerchief, which was waved several times towards us.
Here, a score of grooms holding torches aloft had been arranged in a circle so that the impromptu theater thus formed, which Maignan had ordered with much taste, was as light as in the day.
But neither did any light come thence, and I had turned again and was about to leave, when my eye alighted on a certain thing and I stopped. "What is that?" I said. It was a thin case, book-shaped, of Genoa velvet, somewhat worn. "Plaister," Maignan, who was waiting at the door, answered. "His Majesty's hand is not well yet, and as your excellency knows, he " "Silence, fool!"
The foremost runner I made out to be Fresnoy; but a number of his men were close upon him, and then after an interval came Maignan, waving his blade and emitting frantic threats with every stride.
Fanchette and I went first, tottering in a most natural fashion under the weight of our burdens, while M. d'Agen followed a hundred yards behind. I had given Maignan orders to make a dash for the gate the moment he saw the last named start to run.
Mademoiselle and Madame de Bruhl, with Fanchette and Simon Fleix, lay all this time in such shelter as could be raised for them where I lay; M. Francois and three stout fellows, whom Maignan left to guard us living in a hut within hail. Maignan himself, after seeing out a week of my illness, had perforce returned to his master, and no news had since been received from him.
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