It may be imagined how I felt on hearing this; for although I might have thought nothing of the matter before my suspicions were aroused--since any man might visit such a place out of curiosity--now, my mind being disturbed, I was quick to conceive the worst, and saw with horror my beloved master already destroyed through my carelessness. I questioned La Trape in a fury, but could learn nothing more. He had seen the man slip out, and that was all. "But did you not go in yourself?" I said, restraining my impatience with difficulty. "Afterwards? Yes, my lord." "And made no discovery?" He shook his head. "Was anything prepared for his Majesty?" "There was sherbet; and some water." "You tried them?" La Trape grinned. "No, my lord," he said. "But I gave some to Maignan." "Not explaining?" "No, my lord." "You sacrilegious rascal!" I cried, amused in spite of my anxiety. "And he was none the worse?" "No, my lord." Not satisfied yet, I continued to press him, but with so little success that I still found myself unable to decide whether the Spaniard had wandered in innocently or to explore his ground. In the end, therefore, I made up my mind to see things for myself; and early next morning, at an hour when I was not likely to be observed, I went out by a back door, and with my face muffled and no other attendance than Maignan and La Trape, went to the tennis-court and examined the dressing-room. This was a small closet on the first floor, of a size to hold two or three persons, and with a casement through which the King, if he wished to be private, might watch the game. Its sole furniture consisted of a little table with a mirror, a seat for his Majesty, and a couple of stools, so that it offered small scope for investigation. True, the stale sherbet and the water were still there, the carafes standing on the table beside an empty comfit box, and a few toilet necessaries; and it will be believed that I lost no time in examining them. But I made no discovery, and when I had passed my eye over everything else that the room contained, and noticed nothing that seemed in the slightest degree suspicious, I found myself completely at a loss. I went to the window, and for a moment looked idly into the court. But neither did any light come thence, and I had turned again and was about to leave, when my eye alighted on a certain thing and I stopped. "What is that?" I said. It was a thin case, book-shaped, of Genoa velvet, somewhat worn. "Plaister," Maignan, who was waiting at the door, answered. "His Majesty's hand is not well yet, and as your excellency knows, he--"