The Snowball

I tried my utmost to dissuade him, pleading that his presence could not be necessary, and might prove a hindrance; besides exposing his person to a certain amount of risk. But he would not listen. When I saw, therefore, that his mind was made up to go, and that as his spirits rose he was inclined to welcome this little expedition as a relief from the ennui which at times troubled him, I reluctantly withdrew my opposition and gave the necessary orders. The King dismissed his suite with a few kind words, and in a very short space we were on our way, under cover of darkness, to the secretary's house.

He lived at this time in a court off the Rue St. Jacques, not far from the church of that name; and the house being remote from the eyes and observations of the street, seemed not unfit for secret and desperate uses.

Although we found lights shining behind several of the barred windows, the wintry night, the darkness of the court, and perhaps the errand on which we came, imparted so gloomy an aspect to the place that the King hitched his sword forward, while I begged him to permit the Swiss who accompanied us to go on with us. This, however, he would not allow, and accordingly they were left at the entrance to the court with orders to follow at a given signal.

On the steps, the King, who, to disguise himself the better, had borrowed one of my cloaks, stumbled and almost fell. This threw him into a fit of laughter; for no sooner was he engaged in an adventure which promised to be dangerous than his spirits invariably rose to such a degree as to make him the most charming companion in peril man ever had. He was still shaking, and pulling me to and fro in one of those boyish frolics which sometimes swayed him, when a sudden outcry inside the house startled us into sobriety, and reminded us all too soon of the business which brought us thither.

Wondering what it might mean, I was about to rap on the door with my hilt when the King put me aside, and, by a happy instinct, tried the latch. The door yielded to his hands, and, slowly opening, gave us admittance.

We found ourselves in a gloomy hall, ill-lit, and hung with patched arras. In one corner stood a group of servants. Of these some looked scared and some amused, but all were so much taken up with the movements of a harsh-faced woman, who was pacing the opposite side of the hall, that they did not heed our entrance. A momentary glance at this strange state of things showed me that the woman was Madame Nicholas; but I was still at a loss to guess what she was doing or what was happening in the house.

I stood a moment, but finding she still took no notice of us, I beckoned to one of the servants, and bade him tell his mistress a gentleman would speak with her. The man went with the message; but she sent him off with a flea in his ear, and screamed at him so violently that for a moment I thought she was mad. Then it appeared that the object of her attention was a door at the side of the hall; for, stopping suddenly in her walk, she went up to it, and struck it passionately with her hands.

"Come out!" she cried. "Come out, you villain!"

Restraining the King, I went forward myself, and, saluting her politely, begged a word with her apart, thinking she would recognize me.

Her answer, however, showed that she did not. "No!" she cried, waving me off, in the utmost excitement. "No; you will not get me away-I know you. You are as bad one as the other." Then turning again to the door, she continued, "Come out! Do you hear! Come out! I'll have no more of your intrigues and your Hallots!"

I pricked up my ears at the name "But, Madame," I said, "one moment."

"Begone!" she retorted, turning on me so wrathfully that I fairly recoiled before her. "I shall stay here till I drop; but I will have him out and expose him. There shall be an end of his precious plots and his Hallots if I have to go to the King!"

Words so curiously à propos could not but recall to my mind the confusion into which my mention of Du Hallot had thrown the secretary earlier in the day. And since they seemed also to be consistent with the warning conveyed to me, and indeed to explain it, they should have corroborated my worst suspicions. But a sense of something unreal and fantastic, with which I could not grapple, continued to puzzle me in the presence of this angry woman; and it was with no great assurance that I said, "Do I understand then, Madame, that M. du Hallot is in that room?"

"M. du Hallot?" she replied, in a tone that was almost a scream. "No; but he would be if he had taken the hint I sent him! He would be! I will have no more secrecy, however, and no more plots. I have suffered enough already, and now Madame shall suffer if she has not forgotten how to blush. Are you coming out there?" she continued, once more applying herself to the door, her face inflamed with passion. "I shall stay! Oh, I shall stay, I assure you. Until morning if necessary!"

"But, Madame," I said, beginning to see daylight, and finding words with difficulty-for I already heard in fancy the King's laughter and could conjure up the endless quips and cranks with which he would pursue me-"your warning did not perhaps reach M. du Hallot!"

"It reached his coach, at any rate," the scold retorted. "Another time I will have no half-measures. But as for that," she continued, turning on me suddenly with her arms akimbo, and the fiercest of airs, "I would like to know what business it is of yours, Monsieur, whether it reached him or not! I know you-you are in league with my husband! You are here to shelter him, and this Madame du Hallot! But-"

At that moment, however, the door at last opened; and M. Nicholas, wearing an aspect so meek and crestfallen that I hardly knew him, came out. He was followed by a young woman plainly dressed, and looking almost as much frightened as himself; in whom I had no difficulty in recognizing Felix's wife.

"Why!" Madame Nicholas cried, her face falling. "This is not-who is this? Who-" with increased vehemence-"is this baggage, I would like to know?"

"My dear," the secretary protested earnestly, spreading out his hands-fortunately he had eyes only for his wife, and did not see us-"this is one of your ridiculous mistakes! It is, I assure you. This is the wife of a clerk whom I dismissed to-day, and she has been with me begging me to reinstate her husband. That is all. That is all, my dear. You have made this-"

I heard no more, for, taking advantage of the obscurity of the hall, and the preoccupation of the couple, I made hurriedly for the door, and passing out into the darkness, found myself at once in the embrace of the King, who, seizing me round the neck, laughed on my shoulder till he cried, continually adjuring me to laugh also, and ejaculating between the paroxysms, "Poor Du Hallot! Poor Du Hallot!" with many things of the same nature, which any one acquainted with court life may supply for himself.

I confess I did not on my part find it so easy to laugh: partly because I am not of so gay a disposition as that great prince, and partly because I cannot always see the ludicrous side of events in which I myself take part. But on the King at last assuring me that he would not betray the secret even to La Varenne, I took comfort and gradually reconciled myself to an episode which, unlike the more serious events it now becomes my duty to relate, had only one result, and that unimportant; I mean the introduction to my service of the clerk Felix, who, proving worthy of confidence, remained with me after the lamentable death of the King my master, and is to-day one of those to whom I entrust the preparation of these Memoirs.