'Perhaps so,' said the easy King; 'but mort de tout les diables! let us have no more of politics, for I love to avoid them, and to come here when I am weary of display. The parade and routine of royalty are veritable slavery. Do you remember that fool the Prince of Condé entering Paris in 1616 with no less than fifteen hundred nobles and chevaliers and a thousand partizans in his train, and how he alarmed our royal mother, Mary de Medicis, who thought he had come to sack the city? By-the-by, in that year she had just finished the Hotel de Gondi to the tune of forty thousand crowns.' 'Sire, you forget that in 1616 I was but a girl,' said the Countess, pouting again. 'Four o'clock,' said the King, rising, as the hall-clock of the château struck in the turret of the quadrangle; 'and I promised to meet the grand huntsman and grand falconer at Versailles this evening about some little improvements I am making in the kennels and falconry. Fortunately, M. Richelieu does not interfere with _them_. I must go.' 'So soon, sire!' 'But you will accompany me, Countess, I hope.' 'If your Majesty would excuse me--' She paused, for the pettish Louis knit his brow. 'Countess!'--he began impressively. 'This morning I was so unwell, and slept so little--' ''Tis the mice in this old château, Countess,' said the King, glancing round him suspiciously; 'and this old cabinet--some of M. le Duc de Sully's furniture,' he added, giving it a knock that made my heart to leap, 'seems a very receptacle for them. We must have it broken and burned!' The Countess was terrified. 'I will go, sire,' she faltered. 'Thanks, dear Clara; your hand.' He led her out with his jaunty step again, and they retired. I heard the wheels of the royal carriage in the avenue a moment after, and then the hoofs of the musketeer escort. As these sounds died away, my heart sank within me, for I was locked in the cabinet, and its key was in the bosom of the Countess, who might return to release me heaven alone knew when! CHAPTER XIV. THE OAK CABINET. My reflections were of a somewhat chequered nature. The amorous dalliance I had observed, and the conversation I had been forced to overhear, shocked and cooled, while it exasperated me. On one hand I found the Countess evidently taking money from officers, peers, and gentlemen for titles and crosses cajoled from the facile king; and on the other, I perceived her drawing from him intelligence concerning the intended war against the Duke of Lorraine, in whose secret interest she and her attendant, as natives of his duchy, were perhaps naturally enough enlisted. Then I thought of my present predicament--locked up in a secret cabinet, in a remote part of this ancient château, where my outcries might be unheard. Clara might be induced, or perhaps by circumstances compelled, to remain at Versailles for a night; perhaps for three nights, or even longer! The perspiration burst over me with this idea!