Three days after this discussion, Louis had just seated himself at his morning task, when he heard a knock at the chamber door. This was an unusual circumstance, for Gerard never approached with such signal, but at the hours when his stroke was to announce the frugal repast in the adjoining apartment. The Sieur always entered with his own key; and this was a time of the day he never visited the Chateau. Louis thought it could be no summons to him, and that probably Gerard had accidentally occasioned the noise in passing. But in another minute, he heard a second knock, louder than the former. He then rose to see what it was, and to his surprise beheld Castanos; whom he had not seen, or heard of, since his departure with the dispatches for Spain. Hoping to hear news of his father; and that his letter to Don Ferdinand had reached him in safety; Louis eagerly bade him welcome from Madrid. With a deepened gloom on his always sullen countenance, Castanos roughly interrupted him.-- "I am sent to tell you, Senor, that the Sieur Ignatius is at the point of death." "Impossible!" cried Louis, "he was not here yesterday; but I saw him the evening before, in perfect health." "Last night he was stabbed in the porch of the Jesuits' College," returned Castanos. Louis's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, as grasping the arm of his unfeeling informant, he seemed to demand, who had done it? For once in his life, the morose Spaniard suffered his half-closed eyes to look directly on the face of a fellow-creature. He was not insensible to the horror depicted on Louis, and in more humane accents replied-- "Villains way-laid him in the porch at the outer gate of the College, where he always quits his carriage. They closed on him: but he struggled, and drew his dagger. The business, however, was soon over; for the stroke of some heavy weapon felled him to the ground; and while he lay insensible, to make sure work, they stabbed him, and fled. But the drawn blood did a service not intended.--It recovered my lord Ignatius from his swoon; and he managed to stagger to the gate, and gain admittance. When I was sent for to his chamber, which was not till this morning, I found surgeons and a priest with him; and they declare his wounds dangerous." "And am I not to see him?" cried Louis, forgetting his hard task-master, in the image of a fellow-creature dying by murder; that fellow-creature was his father's friend; and he repeated, "may I not go to him?" "I came to bring you to him," replied Castanos.