I am not so stockish a man but that what followed was all very sweet--Mademoiselle's new gaiety, a gaiety of both heart and head, the boy Gaston's childish adoration, Brother Paul's thanksgiving overflowing in affection. Of Brother Paul's part in the final scene on the Grey Leap I have said nothing, and only now say this lest that kindly, gentle-hearted servant of love and mercy should be thought cold or callous. There on the ledge he had patted and fondled me with his withered hands, his heart too full to say more than, "Ah, my son, my son! God be thanked for His mercy, God be thanked! God be thanked!" And since then he had petted me like one who was a son indeed, a son long lost and newly found. Sweet? It was blessedly, perilously sweet to a lonely man at hourly odds with his conscience, so perilously sweet that the days slipped on, and though ten times the child was mine for the taking, I persuaded myself that to wait yet a little longer was wisest. Solignac, Jan Meert, Babette, old hate and old love, were alike forgotten, and I lived on through the glorious days of early August as if there was no such shadow across the sunshine as the power and vengeance of Louis of France. But as once on a day of feasting there came a hand upon the wall and wrote, so now, when my heart was a nest of song-birds, that sang of peace and love till my little world was full of the harmony, there came a warning which crashed the music to a discord with a curt, Thou fool! It is hate, and there is no peace. It was always Martin's custom to meet me at the gate on the return from our daily rides, partly that all Morsigny might see I was well served, but partly, and as I love to believe, chiefly that he might the sooner see his beloved Master Gaspard. On the day of which I write he was there as usual--Brother Paul was in Pan, and Mademoiselle would neither mount nor dismount at the Château gate--but he was there with a difference. His bow was deeper, his swagger had a larger pride, and instead of himself leading Roland to the stables, he handed him over to a groom's care with an unwonted air of authority. Then with a "This way, Monsieur, it you please," he led the way to my sleeping-room, and shot the bolt behind me. "These with haste," said he, drawing a letter from an inner pocket; "and, my faith! but they must truly be in a hurry to send all the way to Morsigny after us. _To Monsieur Gaspard de Helaville, at Morsigny, in Navarre. These in haste._" At the sight of it my heart went sick as sick as when I had hung upon the sheer face of the Grey Leap. And well it might. The solid earth, and that which is so much sweeter, and, at times, so much more real, the world of my own imagining, had crumbled suddenly under my feet, and the abyss below was as deep as all eternity.