Roads of Destiny | Page 9

south gate--the south gate, mind--and say to the guards there,
'The falcon has left his nest.' They will pass you, and you will go to the
south entrance to the palace. Repeat the words, and give this letter to
the man who will reply 'Let him strike when he will.' This is the
password, monsieur, entrusted to me by my uncle, for now when the
country is disturbed and men plot against the king's life, no one without
it can gain entrance to the palace grounds after nightfall. If you will,
monsieur, take him this letter so that my mother may see him before
she closes her eyes."
"Give it me," said David, eagerly. "But shall I let you return home
through the streets alone so late? I--"
"No, no--fly. Each moment is like a precious jewel. Some time," said
the lady, with eyes long and cozening, like a gypsy's, "I will try to
thank you for your goodness."
The poet thrust the letter into his breast, and bounded down the
stairway. The lady, when he was gone, returned to the room below.
The eloquent eyebrows of the marquis interrogated her.
"He is gone," she said, "as fleet and stupid as one of his own sheep, to
deliver it."
The table shook again from the batter of Captain Desrolles's fist.
"Sacred name!" he cried; "I have left my pistols behind! I can trust no
others."
"Take this," said the marquis, drawing from beneath his cloak a shining,
great weapon, ornamented with carven silver. "There are none truer.
But guard it closely, for it bears my arms and crest, and already I am

suspected. Me, I must put many leagues between myself and Paris this
night. To-morrow must find me in my /chateau/. After you, dear
countess."
The marquis puffed out the candle. The lady, well cloaked, and the two
gentlemen softly descended the stairway and flowed into the crowd that
roamed along the narrow pavements of the Rue Conti.
David sped. At the south gate of the king's residence a halberd was laid
to his breast, but he turned its point with the words; "The falcon has left
his nest."
"Pass, brother," said the guard, "and go quickly."
On the south steps of the palace they moved to seize him, but again the
/mot de passe/ charmed the watchers. One among them stepped forward
and began: "Let him strike--" but a flurry among the guards told of a
surprise. A man of keen look and soldierly stride suddenly pressed
through them and seized the letter which David held in his hand.
"Come with me," he said, and led him inside the great hall. Then he
tore open the letter and read it. He beckoned to a man uniformed as an
officer of musketeers, who was passing. "Captain Tetreau, you will
have the guards at the south entrance and the south gate arrested and
confined. Place men known to be loyal in their places." To David he
said: "Come with me."
He conducted him through a corridor and an anteroom into a spacious
chamber, where a melancholy man, sombrely dressed, sat brooding in a
great, leather-covered chair. To that man he said:
"Sire, I have told you that the palace is as full of traitors and spies as a
sewer is of rats. You have thought, sire, that it was my fancy. This man
penetrated to your very door by their connivance. He bore a letter
which I have intercepted. I have brought him here that your majesty
may no longer think my zeal excessive."
"I will question him," said the king, stirring in his chair. He looked at
David with heavy eyes dulled by an opaque film. The poet bent his

knee.
"From where do you come?" asked the king.
"From the village of Vernoy, in the province of Eure-et-Loir, sire."
"What do you follow in Paris?"
"I--I would be a poet, sire."
"What did you in Vernoy?"
"I minded my father's flock of sheep."
The king stirred again, and the film lifted from his eyes.
"Ah! in the fields!"
"Yes, sire."
"You lived in the fields; you went out in the cool of the morning and
lay among the hedges in the grass. The flock distributed itself upon the
hillside; you drank of the living stream; you ate your sweet, brown
bread in the shade, and you listened, doubtless, to blackbirds piping in
the grove. Is not that so, shepherd?"
"It is, sire," answered David, with a sigh; "and to the bees at the flowers,
and, maybe, to the grape gatherers singing on the hill."
"Yes, yes," said the king, impatiently; "maybe to them; but surely to the
blackbirds. They whistled often, in the grove, did they not?"
"Nowhere, sire, so sweetly as in Eure-et-Loir. I have endeavored to
express their