As we rambled towards the Rue d'Ecosse, we passed the magnificent house of the famous courtesan Marion de l'Orme, which by chance had a company of the Cardinal's musketeers drawn up before it. This occasioned a hundred irreverend jokes from the chevalier and the lively old Marechal de Logis; and here another handsome cavalier of the Scottish Guard, Raynold Cheyne, of Dundargle in Fifeshire, joined us. His doublet was of black velvet, so thickly ornamented with jet that it glittered like a corslet in the sun. His mantle was dark crimson; his long boots were of black leather; his sword and dagger hilts of silver, and altogether he was a sombre, picturesque, and impressive-looking fellow. I saw the statue of Henry the Great as we passed along the Rue St. Honoré, and in that quaint old street the Feronnerie, Cheyne showed me the exact spot where, twenty-three years before, Henry had perished under the dagger of Ravaillac, beneath the windows of a notary named Pontrain, at a place where the street was crowded and rendered more narrow by the little shops which are built against the walls of the churchyard of St. Innocent. 'Hah!' said the old Marechal de Logis, with a grin, 'had our Scottish Guard been with Henry in lieu of his wretched French lacqueys, Ravaillac had never achieved the dreadful deed of that day!' 'And where were they?' asked the Viscount. 'They were marching towards the frontier, as a war was expected with Spain,' replied our veteran comrade, as we found ourselves in the Rue d'Ecosse, and at the sign of the Golden Fleur-de-lis, kept by Maître Pierre Omelette. CHAPTER IX. WE DINE AT THE FLEUR-DE-LIS. This hotel was a picturesque old mansion having three sharp wooden gables that cut the blue sky overhead, and projected over the street on beams of grotesquely-carved wood, which rested on stone pillars, like some of the old timber-fronted houses of king James IV.'s time which I had seen at home. A large sign-board bearing a blue shield powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis swung on a rusty iron rod above the thoroughfare. The arrival of six cavaliers all so showily attired--five of them at least being so--with plume and mantle, sword and dagger, and having, moreover, in their hats the white silver cross of St. Andrew, which in Paris was the distinguishing badge of that patrician band the Guard du Corps Ecossais, made the host bow at least eighteen successive times to the red rosettes of his garters as he ushered us into a plainly-furnished room, decorated by a few coarse Flemish engravings of the wars in Flanders--the siege of the Brielle and the fighting at the Isle Rhé. There were also two tawdry prints of the beautiful Ninon de l'Enclos, which the Chevalier Livingstone and Raynold Cheyne pronounced to be execrable likenesses, and proposed to tear down.