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A Perilous Amour
by
The sun had set, and such light as remained fell cold and gray between the trees. The crackling of a stick under a horse’s hoof, or the ring of a spur against a scabbard, were the only sounds which broke the stillness of the wood as we proceeded. We had gone some little way when M. Louis halted, and, turning in his saddle, called to me.
“M. de Rosny,” he said,–the light had so far failed that I could scarcely see his face,–“I have a meeting with the Viscount de Caylus on Saturday about a little matter of a lady’s glove. Should anything prevent my appearance–“
“I will see that a proper explanation is given,” I answered, bowing.
“Or if M. d’Entragues will permit me,” eagerly exclaimed the Gascon, who was riding by my side, “M. de Boisrose of St. Palais, gently born, through before unknown to him, I will appear in his place and make the Viscount de Caylus swallow the glove.”
“You will?” said M. Louis, with politeness. “You are a gentleman. I am obliged to you.”
He waved his hand with a gesture which I afterward well remembered, and, giving his horse the rein, went forward along the path at a brisk walk. We followed, and I had just remarked that a plant of box was beginning here and there to take the place of the usual undergrowth, when a sheet of flame seemed to leap out through the dusk to meet him, and, his horse rearing wildly, he fell headlong from the saddle without word or cry. My men would have sprung forward before the noise of the report had died away, and might possibly have overtaken one or more of the assassins; but I restrained them. When La Trape dismounted and raised the fallen man, the latter was dead.
Such were the circumstances, now for the first time made public, which attended the discovery of this, the least known, yet one of the most dangerous, of the many plots which were directed against the life of my master. The course which I adopted may be blamed by some, but it is enough for me that after the lapse of years it is approved by my conscience and by the course of events. For it was ever the misfortune of that great king to treat those with leniency whom no indulgence could win; and I bear with me to this day the bitter assurance that, had the fate which overtook Louis d’Entragues embraced the whole of that family, the blow which ten years later cut short Henry’s career would never have been struck.