His Majesty, Louis XIII., though not very much of a lover, sometimes did take a liking to the fair sex. His regard for Mademoiselle de la Fayette, a maid of honour to his queen, was notoriously known, but he was a man at times religious, weak, bigoted, scrupulous by fits, and not over-voluptuous by nature; hence, save for the honour his royal regard was supposed to confer, and the magnificent gifts it drew forth, his gallantries were neither dangerous nor much in request. His confessor, the Jesuit Coussin, permitted his mild liaison for the charming Fayette to favour the queen-mother's rival, and mademoiselle being in the interest of the minister, Cardinal Richelieu, smiled on the vapid love and clumsy gallantries of the most Christian king. But the tide of politics turned; and by desire of the Cardinal, and by the exordiums of Father Leslie, a Scot, who succeeded Coussin as keeper of the royal conscience, the beautiful Fayette was immured in a convent. Then his Majesty of France fell in love with Clara d'Ische, a lady of Lorraine, whom he created Countess d'Amboise; and on her, now, were the eagle eyes of Richelieu turned, to discover by what means she might be made subservient to himself or be crushed for ever. Thus, thanks to the secret agency of his familiar, Father Joseph du Tremblay, of terrible memory, nearly every servant in her château was the spy of the Cardinal Prime-minister, who, with what truth I say not, was at that moment accounted the lover of Anne of Austria and of Marion de l'Orme. CHAPTER IV. THE BOND OF MANRENT. Madame, who never tired of prattling, spoke again: 'The letter of my dear old friend the Duke--by-the by, does he still curl his mustachios up to his ears?--says that your father was--' 'Blane of that ilk and of Blanerne, madame, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Bailie of Tungland Abbey, and Captain of Carlaveroc for John Earl of Nithsdale.' 'Ma foi! he has as many guttural titles as a Spanish grandee of the first class; but pray tell me, what does that ilk mean?' 'In the Scottish language it denotes, madame, that the holder has either given his name to the territory he possesses, or has taken his name from it; moreover, that he is the head of his surname. Our old baronial houses alone bear it, for it is a custom dating from the days of king Malcolm III., and consequently is more than six hundred years old. My father's office of captainrie under the Earl of Nithsdale was, in some measure, the cause of all our misfortunes and of my exile.' 'Proceed, pray, for I am all attention.' 'He was an old adherent of the house of Nithsdale, and with the present Earl, the Lord Torthorwald, and six other gentlemen of the surnames of Maxwell, Douglas, and Blane, signed, about six years ago, a _Bond of Manrent_--' 'Excuse me, M. Blane--but I do not understand.'