"You say that I am bitterly detested by the people of Bordeaux?" "Why, they fairly execrate you." "Is it so?" said Nanon, with a smile, half-pensive, half-joyous. "I did not think I was telling you something that would be so agreeable to you to hear." "Yes, yes," said Nanon, "it is very sensible at all events, if not exactly agreeable. Yes, you are right," she continued, speaking rather to herself than to her brother; "they do not hate Monsieur de Canolles, nor do they hate you. Wait, wait!" She rose, threw a long silk cloak about her lithe and graceful form, and, sitting at her table, hastily wrote a few lines, which Cauvignac, as he watched the flush that mounted to her brow, and the heaving of her bosom, judged to be of great moment. "Take this," said she, sealing the letter, "and ride alone to Bordeaux, without soldiers or escort. There is a mare in the stable that can do the distance in an hour. Bide as fast as she will carry you, deliver this letter to Madame la Princesse, and Monsieur de Canolles is saved!" Cauvignac looked at his sister in open-mouthed amazement; but he knew how clear-sighted she was, and wasted no time criticising her instructions. He hurried to the stable, leaped upon the horse she had described, and half an hour thereafter was more than half-way to Bordeaux. Nanon, as soon as she saw him from her window galloping away, knelt, atheist as she was, and repeated a short prayer; after which she bestowed her money and jewels in a casket, ordered a carriage, and bade Francinette array her in her most splendid garments. II. Save the neighborhood of the Esplanade, whither everybody was hurrying, the city of Bordeaux seemed deserted. In the streets which lay at a distance from that favored-quarter there was no sound save the tread of the patrol, or the terrified voice of some old woman as she closed and locked her door. But in the direction of the Esplanade there was a dull, continuous murmur as of waves beating upon a distant shore. Madame la Princesse had finished her correspondence, and had sent word to Monsieur le Duc de La Rochefoucauld that she would receive him. At the princess's feet, crouching upon a rug, and studying with the keenest anxiety her face and her humor, was Claire, evidently awaiting a moment when she might speak without annoying her; but her enforced patience, her studied calmness were belied by the nervous movements of the fingers with which she was folding and crumpling a handkerchief. "Seventy-seven signatures!" cried the princess; "it's not all pleasure you see, Claire, to play at being queen." "Indeed it is, madame; for in taking the queen's place you assumed her most gracious prerogative, that of being merciful." "And that of punishing, Claire," rejoined the princess proudly, "for one of the seventy-seven signatures was written at the foot of a death-warrant." "And the seventy-eighth will be at the foot of a pardon, will it not, madame?" pleaded Claire.