On seeing me Vallon and Jacques both stopped, and I signalled to them to cross over the road to me, as I was anxious to hear news of Belin, who was an intimate friend. This they did, and on my inquiry Vallon informed me that Belin was at his hotel in the Rue de Bourdonnais, and the good fellow urged me to come there at once, saying that his master would never forgive him were he not to insist on my coming. I was truly glad to hear Belin was in Paris. He was a tried friend, whose assistance I could rely on in any emergency; and, telling Vallon I would be at the Rue de Bourdonnais shortly, I went on to my lodging, followed by Jacques, leaving Vallon to go onwards with his companion. On coming home I found, as might be expected, that there was no sign of Palin, and, after waiting for him until the dinner hour, gave him up for the present and rode off to the Two Ecus; and when my dinner, a very simple one, was finished, took my way to the Rue de Bourdonnais, this time mounted on Couronne, with Jacques, well armed, on the sorrel. The hotel of the Compte de Belin lay at the west end of the Rue de Bourdonnais, close to the small house wherein lived Madame de Montpensier of dreadful memory; and on reaching it I found that it more than justified the description Belin had given of it to me, one day whilst we were idling in the trenches before Dourlens. It stood some way back from the road, and the entrance to the courtyard was through a wonderfully worked iron gateway, a counterpart, though on a smaller scale, of the one at Anet. At each corner of the square building was a hanging turret, and from the look of the windows of one of these I guessed that my friend had taken up his quarters there. I was met by Vallon, who said he had informed his master of my coming; and, telling a servant to hold my horse, he ushered me in, talking of a hundred things at once. I had not gone ten steps up the great stairway when Belin himself appeared, running down to meet me. '_Croix Dieu!_' he burst out as we embraced. 'I thought you were with the saints, and that de Rone, you and a hundred others were free from all earthly troubles.' 'Not yet, de Belin. I trust that time will be far distant.' 'Amen! But you as good as buried yourself alive, at any rate.' 'How so?' 'Vallon tells me you have been a month in Paris, and you have never once been to the Rue de Bourdonnais until now. You might have known, man, that this house is as much yours as mine.' 'My dear friend, there were reasons.' He put a hand on each of my shoulders, looked at me in the face with kind eyes, and then laughed out. 'Reasons! _Pardieu!_ I can hardly make you out. You have a face a half-toise in length, never a plume in your hat, and a general look of those hard-praying and, I will say, hard-fighting gentry who gave the King his own again.' 'How loyal you have become.' 'We were all wrong--the lot of us--and I own my mistake; but you--you have not turned Huguenot, have you?'