He looked at me straight in the face, and stroked his white beard thoughtfully. He was a tall, a very tall, thin man, and his eyes, of the clearest blue, seemed to lighten with a strange light. 'No, my son, not for the mistress of the King, as you call her, but for the open hand and the generous heart, for the kindly soul that never turned from suffering or from sorrow, for Magdalen bountiful, and, let us hope, Magdalen repentant.' 'But----' 'Adieu, my son--think of what I have said. Is your own heart so pure that you can afford to cast a stone at the dead?' And without waiting for a further answer he went onwards. I turned and watched the tall, slim figure as it moved through the crowd, the people making way for him on every side as if he were a prince of the church. But though he was slowly passing out of sight, he had left words behind him that were at their work. This was the woman whom I had openly-reviled as fallen and beyond the pale--had I any right to cast stones? For a moment I was lost in myself, when Jacques' voice cut into my thoughts. 'That must have been a cardinal at least, monsieur, though he does not look like the Cardinal du Perron, whom we heard preach at Rheims--I will ask,' and he inquired who the Capuchin was, of a man who had just come up. 'That is the _pere_ Ange, monsieur,' was the answer, and the man went on, leaving Jacques' thanks in the air. The _pere_ Ange. The name brought back a host of recollections to me as I shook up Couronne's reins and headed her towards the Pont St. Michel. I saw myself a boy again in the suite of Joyeuse, and remembered with what awe I used to gaze on the brilliant de Bouchage, his brother, who was a frequent visitor at Orleans. His splendid attire, his courtly air, the great deeds he had done were in all men's mouths. We youngsters, who saw him at a respectful distance, aped the cut of his cloak, the tilt of his sword, the cock of his plumed hat. If we only knew how he made love, we would have tried to do so in like manner; but for this each one of us had to find out a way of his own. All at once it was rumoured that the chevalier had vanished, disappeared mysteriously, and that every trace of him was lost. There were men who whispered of the Chatelet, or, worse still, the Bastille; others who said the Seine was very deep near the mills by the Pont aux Meunniers; others who put together the sudden retreat from the court of the brilliant but infamous Madame de Sauves, the Rose of Guise, with the disappearance of de Bouchage, and shook their heads and winked knowingly. They were all wrong. Gradually the truth came out, and it became known that the polished courtier, the great soldier, and the splendid cavalier had thrown away the world as one would fling aside an old cloak, and buried himself in a cloister.