After a while, drawing from his breast a medallion which hung concealed, suspended by a black ribbon, he said: "Come, my good old master, talk with me as you have so often talked; come, great King, forget your court for the smile of a true friend; come, great man, consult me concerning ambitious Austria; come, inconstant chevalier, speak to me of the lightness of thy love, and of the fidelity of thine inconstancy; come, heroic soldier, complain to me again that I obscure you in combat.

Ah, had I only done it in Paris! Had I only received thy wound?
With thy blood the world has lost the benefits of thine interrupted reign--" The tears of the Marechal obscured the glass that covered the large medallion, and he was effacing them with respectful kisses, when, his door being roughly opened, he quickly drew his sword.
"Who goes there ?" he cried, in his surprise, which was much increased when he saw M.de Launay, who, hat in hand, advanced toward him, and said to him, with embarrassment: "Monsieur, it is with a heart pierced with grief that I am forced to tell you that the King has commanded me to arrest you.

A carriage awaits you at the gate, attended by thirty of the Cardinal-Duke's musketeers." Bassompierre had not risen: and he still held the medallion in his right hand, and the sword in the other.

He tendered it disdainfully to this man, saying: "Monsieur, I know that I have lived too long, and it is that of which I was thinking; in the name of the great Henri, I restore this sword peacefully to his son.

Follow me." He accompanied these words with a look so firm that De Launay was depressed, and followed him with drooping head, as if he had himself been arrested by the noble old man, who, seizing a flambeau, issued from the court and found all the doors opened by horse-guards, who had terrified the people of the chateau in the name of the King, and commanded silence.