De Catinat alone remained awake, his nerves still in a tingle from that strange sudden shadow which had fallen upon his soul.

What could it mean?
Not surely that Adele was in danger?
He had heard of such warnings, but had he not left her in safety behind cannons and stockades?
By the next evening at latest he would see her again.

As he lay looking up through the tangle of copper leaves at the sky beyond, his mind drifted like the clouds above him, and he was back once more in the jutting window in the Rue St.Martin, sitting on the broad _bancal_, with its Spanish leather covering, with the gilt wool-bale creaking outside, and his arm round shrinking, timid Adele, she who had compared herself to a little mouse in an old house, and who yet had courage to stay by his side through all this wild journey.

And then again he was back at Versailles.

Once more he saw the brown eyes of the king, the fair bold face of De Montespan, the serene features of De Maintenon-- once more he rode on his midnight mission, was driven by the demon coachman, and sprang with Amos upon the scaffold to rescue the most beautiful woman in France.