“Ah!” I said no more. My agitation was indeed such that, before giving reins to it, I bade La Trape withdraw. I could scarcely believe that, perfectly acquainted as the king was with the plots which Spain and the Catholics were daily weaving for his life, and possessing such unavowed but powerful enemies among the great lords as Tremouille and Bouillon, to say nothing of Mademoiselle d’Entragues’s half-brother, the Count of Auvergne--I could hardly believe that with this knowledge his Majesty had been so foolhardy as to travel without guards or attendance to Fontainebleau. And yet I now felt an absolute certainty that this was the case. The presence of La Varenne also, the confidant of his intrigues, informed me of the cause of this wild journey, convincing me that his Majesty had given way to the sole weakness of his nature, and was bent on one of those adventures of gallantry which had been more becoming in the Prince of Bearn than in the king of France. Neither was I at a loss to guess the object of his pursuit. It had been lately whispered in the court that the king had seen and fallen in love with his mistress’s younger sister, Susette d’Entragues, whose home at Malesherbes lay but three leagues from Fontainebleau, on the edge of the forest. This placed the king’s imprudence in a stronger light, for he had scarcely in France a more dangerous enemy than her brother Auvergne; nor had the immense sums which he had settled on the elder sister satisfied the mean avarice or conciliated the brutish hostility of her father. Apprised of all this, I saw that Father Cotton had desired to communicate it to me. But his motive I found it less easy to divine. It might have been a wish to balk this new passion through my interference, and at the same time to expose me to the risk of his Majesty’s anger. Or it might simply have been a desire to avert danger from the king’s person. At any rate, constant to my rule of ever preferring my master’s interest to his favour, I sent for Maignan, my equerry, and bade him have an equipage ready at dawn. Accordingly at that hour next morning, attended only by La Trape, with a groom, a page, and four Swiss, I started, giving out that I was bound for Sully to inspect that demesne, which had formerly been the property of my family, and of which the refusal had just been offered to me. Under cover of this destination I was enabled to reach La Ferte Alais unsuspected. There, pretending that the motion of the coach fatigued me, I mounted the led horse, without which I never travelled, and bidding La Trape accompany me, gave orders to the others to follow at their leisure to Pethiviers, where I proposed to stay the night.