His curiously mobile face he distorted at once into an admirable likeness to the hunchback, and then, this initial likeness thus acquired, he heightened and intensified it by few but skilful strokes of coloring matter. Then he dexterously rearranged his hair to resemble the hunchback's dishevelled locks, compelling its curls to fall about his transformed face and shade it. Finally he surmounted all with the hunchback's hat, placed well forward on his forehead. He gave a smile of satisfaction at the result of his handiwork, and the smile was the malign smile of Æsop. "That is good enough," he murmured, "to deceive a short-sighted fellow like Peyrolles, and as for his Highness of Gonzague, he has not seen me for so many years that there will be no difficulty with him." He glanced at his new raiment with an expression of distaste. "When I get to Paris," he mused, "I will shift these habiliments. It is all very well to play the bird of prey, but it is somewhat unpleasant to wear the bird's own feathers." XVIII THE FACTION OF GONZAGUE A little later in the day a company of joyous gentlemen made their way from the fair of Neuilly and came to a halt opposite the tavern whose green arbors seemed inviting enough after the heat of the dusty road. All of the company were richly dressed, most of the company were young--the joyous satellites of the central figure of the party. This was a tall, graceful Italianate man, who carried his fifty years with the grace and ease of thirty. He had a handsome face; those that admired him, and they were many, said there was no handsomer man at the court of the king than the king's familiar friend Louis de Gonzague. A man of the hour and a man of the world, Gonzague delighted to shine almost unrivalled and quite unsurpassed in the splendid court which the cardinal had permitted the king to gather about him. Something of a statesman and much of a scholar, Gonzague delighted to be the patron of the arts, and to lend, indirectly, indeed, but no less efficaciously, his counsels to the service of the cardinal during the cardinal's lifetime, and to the king now that the cardinal was gone. A man of pleasure, Gonzague was careful to enjoy all the delights that a society which found its chief occupation in the pursuit of amusement afforded. Even the youngest cavalier in Paris or Versailles would have regretted to find himself in rivalry with Gonzague for the favors of the fair. But in his pleasures, as in his policy, Gonzague was always discreet, reserved, even slightly mysterious, and though rumor had linked his name time and time again with the names of such gracious ladies as the cardinal had permitted to illuminate the court of the king, Gonzague had always been far too cautious, or too indifferent, to drift into anything that could in the least resemble an enduring entanglement. Indeed, there was an element of the Oriental in his tastes, which led him rather to find his entertainment in such light