Being pretty confident, however, that a single glance at this would alter M.du Mornay's bearing for the better, I hastened, looking on it as a kind of talisman, to draw it out and present it to him.
He took it, and looked at it, and opened it, but with so cold and immovable an aspect as made my heart sink more than all that had gone before.

'What is amiss ?' I cried, unable to keep silence.

''Tis from the king, sir.' 'A king in motley!' he answered, his lip curling.
The sense of his words did not at once strike home to me, and I murmured, in great disorder, that the king had sent for me.
'The king knows nothing of it,' was his blunt answer, bluntly given.

And he thrust the paper back into my hands.

'It is a trick,' he continued, speaking with the same abruptness, 'for which you have doubtless to thank some of those idle young rascals without.