In the mean time the Count de Morseiul had opened the letter from the governor, and read the contents, which informed him that a pack of cards had been found, in place of a commission, in the packet given by the King to Messieurs St Helie and Pelisson; that those gentlemen declared that the packet had been opened; and that they had come with the Bishop for the purpose of making formal application to the governor to recall him, the Count de Morseiul, to Poitiers, alleging that the only period at which the real commission could have been abstracted was while they were in his company at an inn on the road. They had also pointed out, the Duke said, that the Count, as one of the principal Protestant leaders, was a person more interested than any other, both to ascertain the contents of that packet, and to abstract the commission, in case its contents were such as they imagined them to have been; and at the same lime they said there was good reason to believe that, in consequence of the knowledge thus obtained, he, the Count de Morseiul, had called together a meeting of Protestant gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Poitiers, had communicated to them the plans and purposes of the government, and had concerted schemes for frustrating the King's designs. The Duc de Rouvré then went on to say, that as he knew and fully confided in the honour and integrity of the Count de Morseiul, and as the Bishop and Monsieur Pelisson had produced no corroborative proof of their allegation whatsoever, he by no means required or demanded the Count to return to Poitiers, but thought fit to communicate to him the facts, and to leave him to act according to his own judgment. The Count paced the room in no slight agitation for several minutes after he had read the letter; but it was not the abstraction of the King's commission, if such an act had really taken place, nor the accusation insinuated, rather than made, against himself, which agitated him on the present occasion. The accusation he regarded as absurd, the abstraction of the commission merely laughable; a suspicion indeed might cross his mind that Riquet had had a hand in it, but he knew well that he himself had none, and therefore he cast the matter from his mind at once. But his agitation proceeded from the thought of being obliged to go back to Poitiers--from the fear of seeing all his good resolutions overthrown--from the idea of meeting once more, surrounded with greater difficulties and danger than ever, her whom he now but too clearly felt to be the only being that he had ever loved.