The Bearnais met D’Epernon in the inner dining-room of Master Anthony’s house. His servants had hastily lighted a few wax candles. In the waggon-littered courtyard without, a torch or two flamed murkily. With a quick burst of anger, Henry leaned from a window and bade them be extinguished. So, with a jetting of sparks on the hard-beaten earth of the courtyard, the darkness suddenly re-established itself.

There was, on the side of the Duke, some attempt at a battle of eyes. But, after all, he had only been the little scion of a Languedocean squire when the Bearnais was already the Bearnais.

The Duke bowed himself as if to set knee to the ground, but Henry caught him up.

“Caumont,” he said, using the old boyish name by which they had known each other in their wild Paris youth, “you have never liked me. You have never been truly my friend. Why do you come to seek me now?”

The busy scheming brain behind the Valois favourite’s brow was working. He had a bluff subject to deal with, therefore he would be bluff.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “there is no one in all France who wishes better to your cause, or more ill to the League than I. When you are King, you shall have no more faithful or obedient subject. But friendship, like love, is born of friendship; it comes not by command. When the King of Navarre makes me his friend, I shall be his!”

“Spoken like a man, and no courtier,” cried the Bearnais, slapping his strong hand into the white palm of D’Epernon with a report like a pistol; “I swear I shall be your friend till the day I die!”

And the Bearnais kept his word, and gave his friendship all his life to the dark, scheming, handsome man, who had served many masters in his time, but had never loved any man save himself, any woman except his wife, and any interest outside of his own pocket.

The soldiers of the Guard Royal made a rhyme which went not ill in the patois of the camp, but which goes lamely enough translated into English. Somewhat thus it ran:

“Duke Epernon and his wife, Jean Caumont and his wife, Cadet Valette and his Cadette, Louis Nogaret and his wife If ever I wagered I would bet My pipe, my lass, and eke my life, That this brave world was made and set For Duke Epernon and his wife Jean Caumont and his wife, Louis Nogaret and his wife, Cadet Valette and his Cadette!”

And so Da Capo to any tune which happened to occur to them in their semi-regal license of King’s free guardsmen.

Which was only the barrack and guard-room way of saying that Jean Louis de Nogaret, Cadet de la Valette, Duc d’Epernon and royal favourite, looked after the interests of a certain important numeral with some care.

“Caumont,” said the King of Navarre, “how came you to know I was in this town? I arrived but an hour ago, and in disguise.”

“Our spies are better than Your Majesty’s,” smiled the Duke. “Your true Calvinist is something too stiff in the backbone to make a capable informer. You ought to employ a few supple Politiques, accustomed to palace backstairs. But, on this occasion, I acknowledge I was favoured by circumstances. For I have with me the daughter of Francis the Scot, called Francis d’Agneau, born, I believe, of a Norman house long established in Scotland near to the Gulf of Solway. Among the saddle-bags of the damsel’s pony, hastily concealed by other hands than her own (I suspect a certain red-haired fool), there was found a series of letters written by Your Majesty, which, in case they might fall into worse hands, I have the honour of returning to you. Also we found an appointment for this very night, to meet with Francis the Scot at the town of Blois in the house of Anthony Arpajon! Your Majesty has, as the Leaguers know, a habit of uncomfortable punctuality in the keeping of your trysts. So I have availed me of that to confide the letters and the maid to you, together with a good Doctor of the Sorbonne, one who has done you no mean service to the honest cause in that wasps’ nest so good, indeed, that if he went back, the Leaguers of his own hive would sting him to death. Therefore I commit them all to you! Only the young man I would gladly keep by me. But that shall be as Your Majesty judges.”

“No, no,” cried the King. “I must have my cousin, if only to look after. If the Leaguers get hold of him, he might gain a throne, indeed, but assuredly he would lose his head. He is a fine lad, and will do very well in the fighting line when Rosny has licked him a little into shape! But I am truly grateful to you, D’Epernon. And in the good times to come, I shall have better ways of proving my gratitude than here, in the house of Anthony Arpajon and in the guise of a carter.”

This was all that D’Epernon had been waiting for, and he promptly bowed himself out. The instant the Duke was through the door, the Bearnais turned to the little circle of his immediate followers.

“Who of you knows the town and Chateau of Blois? It might be worth while following the fellow, just to see if any treachery be in the wind. It may be I do him wrong. If so, I shall do him the greater right hereafter. No, not you, D’Aubigne. I could not risk you. You are my father-confessor, and task me soundly with my faults. Indeed, I might as well be a Leaguer they say the Cardinal sets more easy penances. Brother Guise is the true Churchman he and the King of Spain!”

The King looked about from one to another doubtfully, seeking a fit envoy.

“No, nor you, Rosny; you can fight all day, and figure all night. But for spying we want a lad of another build. Let me see let me see!”

As the King was speaking, Jean-aux-Choux put on his brown Capuchin robe, and covered his red furze brush with the hood.

“I tracked my Lord of Epernon this night once before,” he said, “and by the grace of God I can do as much again. I know his trail, and will be at the orchard gate of the Chateau before he has time to blow the dust out of his key!”

“How do you come to know so much?” demanded the Bearnais.

“By this token,” said Jean carelessly; “that I saw my lady here and the three men come out of the Chateau, I followed them hither, and had your men roused and ready, so that if there had been any treachery, his Dukeship, at least, would have been the first to fall!”

The King looked about him inquiringly.

“Rosny and D’Aubigne,” he said, “what do you know of this does the man speak true?”

“A pupil of John Calvin speaks no lie,” said Jean bravely. The King laughed, whereupon Jean added, “If I do act a lie, it is to save Your Majesty the hope of the Faith!”

“That is rather like the old heresy of doing evil that good may come,” said Henry; “but off with you! If I can accommodate my conscience to a waggoner’s blouse, I do not see why you should not reconcile yours to a monk’s hood!”

Jean-aux-Choux departed, muttering to himself that the Bearnais was becoming as learned as a pupil of Beza or a Sorbonne Doctor, but consoling himself for his dialectical defeat by the thought that, at least, in the Capuchin’s robe he was fairly safe. For even if caught, after all, it was only another trick of the Fool of the Three Henries.

It was, indeed, the only thing concerning which Leaguers, Royalists, and Huguenots were agreed that Jean-aux-Choux was a good, simple fool!