"You poor fool!" said Gabriel. "How could he have had the necessary time to say and do all this since you left me up there in the gallery?" "I, Monseigneur! I haven't stirred from this spot, where you ordered me to await you." "It must have been another, then; and if not to you to whom have I just been speaking?" "Most certainly to the other. Monseigneur; to my double, my ghost." "Poor Martin!" said Gabriel, compassionately, "are you in pain? Doesn't your head ache? Perhaps we have walked too far in the hot sun." "Oh, yes!" said Martin-Guerre, "I see that you fancy that I am wandering, do you not? But a sure proof that I am not mistaken, Monseigneur, is that I don't know a single word of the orders that you think you gave me." "You must have forgotten them, Martin," said Gabriel, gently. "Well, then, I will repeat them, my good fellow. I told you to go and wait for me with the flags in the Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue St. Catherine. Jérôme will accompany you, and I will keep Christopher with me; don't you remember now?" "Pardon, Monseigneur; but how can you expect me to remember what I never knew?" "At all events, you know it now, Martin," said Gabriel. "Come, let us take our horses again at the gates, where our people ought to be waiting with them, and then be off at once. To the Tournelles!" "I obey, Monseigneur. The amount of it is that you have two squires; but I am very glad at least that I have not two masters." The lists for the formal celebration had been laid out across the Rue St. Antoine from the Tournelles to the royal stables. They were in the form of a large square, bordered on each side by scaffolding filled with spectators. At one end were the queen and the court; at the other end was the entrance to the lists where the participants in the games were waiting; the general public filled the two remaining galleries. When, after the marriage ceremony and the banquet which immediately succeeded it were at an end, the queen and court, about three in the afternoon, took their places on the seats reserved for them, vivas and shouts of joy resounded on all sides. But this noisy jubilation caused the fête to be marred by an accident at its very beginning. The horse of Monsieur d'Avallon, one of the captains of the Guards, terrified by the uproar, reared and leaped into the arena, and his rider, unhorsed by the shock, hit his head a terrible blow against one of the wooden barriers which made the enclosure, and he was taken up half dead, and given over to the care of the surgeons in an almost hopeless condition. The king was much moved by this sad casualty; but his passion for games and jousting soon got the better of his sorrow. "Poor Monsieur d'Avallon," said he, "and such a devoted subject! Let us hope at least that he will be well looked after." And then he added,-- "Come! the races for the ring can begin at any time."