"_Pater noster qui es in cœlis_" snarled the constable, when the door had closed behind Gabriel. "Does this cursed fop imagine that I wanted to make advances to him, to win him over to my side, perchance, or to corrupt him possibly? As if I didn't know perfectly well what he is going to say to the king! No matter! if I fall in with him again, he shall pay me dear for his unsociable airs and his defiant insolence! Ho, there, Master Arnauld! Come, come! Where is the blackguard? Vanished too, by the cross! Everybody seems to have taken on a fit of stupidity to-day. The Devil seize them! _Pater noster_!" While the constable was thus venting his ill-humor in curses and _Pater nosters_, as his wont was, Gabriel, on his way out of the Louvre, was passing through a rather dark gallery, when to his great amazement he saw his squire, Martin-Guerre, standing near the door, although he had ordered him to await him in the courtyard. "Is it you, Master Martin?" said he. "So you have come to meet me! Very well! Go you ahead with Jérôme, and wait for me with the flags well wrapped up at the corner of the Rue St. Catherine on the Rue St. Antoine. Perhaps Monseigneur le Cardinal would prefer that we should present the flags to the king on the spot, and in the presence of the whole court assembled at the jousting. Christopher will hold my horse and bear me company. Go on! you understand me, don't you?" "Yes, Monseigneur, I know what I wanted to know," replied Martin-Guerre. And he started down the staircase ahead of Gabriel with an alacrity which augured well for the speedy execution of his commission. Imagine Gabriel's extreme surprise, when he came out more slowly and like one who dreamed, to find his squire still in the court, and now apparently terrified and pale as a ghost. "Well, Martin, what is it, and what is the matter with you?" he asked him. "Ah, Monseigneur, I have just seen him; he passed right near me this very moment, and spoke to me." "Who, pray?" "Who? Why, who but the devil, the ghost, the phantom, the monster, the other Martin-Guerre?" "Still this madness. Martin! Are you dreaming as you stand there?" "No, no, indeed I was not dreaming. He spoke to me, Monseigneur, I tell you; he stopped in front of me, turned me to stone with his wizard's look, and said to me, laughing his infernal laugh, 'So we are still in Vicomte d'Exmès's service, are we?' Note the plural, 'we are,' Monseigneur; 'and we have brought from Italy the flags taken in the field by Monsieur de Guise?' I said yes, in spite of myself, for he fascinated me. How does he know all this, Monseigneur? And he went on: 'Let us not be afraid, for are we not friends and brothers?' And then he heard your footsteps approaching, Monseigneur, and he added, with a diabolical irony which made my hair stand on end, just these words: 'We shall meet again, Martin-Guerre; we shall meet again.' And he disappeared through that little wicket, perhaps, or more likely into the wall."