"That, with your leave, Monsieur de Rosny, is for the ears of my master the King alone." "Tell him he may come in—alone," said the King, with a chuckle. Rosny delivered the message, adding of his own motion that the door should not be opened until the baron had removed his men beyond the wall. At this, Lameray broke forth in indignation, demanding to know whether the King mistrusted him, and Rosny vouchsafing no answer, he stood for a space gnawing his lip, and then, casting a sharp and furious glance over the front of the house, the which was shuttered in all its lower part, he turned swiftly about and led his men out through the gateway. The King laughed, and bade us throw open the shutters, and when Rosny began to remonstrate with him he smote his thigh and cried, "Ventre-saint-gris! Dost think I will be mewed up here as though I were a craven?" Accordingly we opened the shutters, and the King began to march up and down the floor, expecting Monsieur de Lameray to return on foot. And within a minute we saw the baron coming alone through the gateway, and the King commanded that the door should be opened to him; but before this could be done, Raoul de Torcy ran down-stairs from an upper room whence he had been watching all that passed outside, and cried that the men, having tethered their horses in the copse beyond the lane (the same where I had left my horse on that night) were creeping round the wall towards the back of the house. And then Henry’s face took on a wonderful sternness, and bidding Rosny still leave the door closed, he sent all of us but two to keep a watch upon the back until he should summon us. He called to me as I was going, and said, "I will borrow one of your pistols, my friend," being unarmed save for his sword. We went to take up our posts, I directing myself with Raoul to the window through which I had made an entrance. ’Twas plain we could not defend it, for the shutters as well as the window itself hung loose upon their hinges. We therefore determined to quit that room and raise a barricade against its door that opened into the great hall. We were hauling tables and chairs to set against it when we heard Lameray again speaking through the porter’s wicket, saying that his errand brooked no delay, and asking that the King would himself come to the door and speak with him. "Open the door and let him in," cried the King, with a smile.