I avowed myself a partisan of the Fronde, and within three days the Chevalier--who but a little time before had sought an alliance with the Cardinal's family--had become as rabid a frondeur as M.de Gondi, as fierce an anti-cardinalist as M.de Beaufort.
"I humoured him in his new madness, with the result that ere long from being a frondeur in heart, he thirsted to become a frondeur in deeds, and he ended by begging me to bear a letter from him to the Coadjutor of Paris, wherein he offered to place at M.de Gondi's disposal, towards the expenses of the civil war which he believed to be imminent,--as, indeed, it is,--the sum of sixty thousand livres.
"Now albeit I had gone to Canaples for purposes of my own, and not as an agent of M.le Coadjuteur's, still for many reasons I saw fit to undertake the Chevalier's commission.

And so, bearing the letter in question, which was hot and unguarded, and charged with endless treasonable matter, I set out four days later for Paris, arriving here yesterday.
"I little knew that I had been followed by St.Auban.His suspicions must have been awakened, I know not how, and clearly they were confirmed when I stopped before the Coadjutor's house last night.

I was about to mount the steps, when of a sudden I was seized from behind by half a dozen hands and dragged into a side street.

I got free for a moment and attempted to defend myself, but besides St.Auban there were two others.
They broke my sword and attempted to break my skull, in which they went perilously near succeeding, as you see.

Albeit half-swooning, I had yet sufficient consciousness left to realise that my pockets were being emptied, and that at last they had torn open my doublet and withdrawn the treasonable letter from the breast of it.
"I was left bleeding in the kennel, and there I lay for nigh upon an hour until a passer-by succoured me and carried out my request to be brought hither and put to bed." He ceased, and for some moments there was silence, broken only by the wounded man's laboured breathing, which argued that his narrative had left him fatigued.