"Four days! You have four days in which to escape, to hide yourself, to put some frontier between you and the King's wrath! Ah! heaven! you are saved." "And lost also. Once I cross any frontier I shall never recross it, never return to France. Never. Never. And I am a De Beaurepaire; my blood, my life is drawn from France and I shall never see it more." "Nay. With time the King will forgive. You have often said his heart is kindly, that he is never cruel. That he has forgiven much to both women and men who have deceived him." "Ay, to both women and men. But the women were false to his heart alone, and there are thousands of other women in France as fair as they: a king woos and wins where he will. And the men he has forgiven have but forgotten for a moment the difference between him and them; but when it is his throne, his crown, that is in danger, he never forgives." "Seize then upon these four days; fly to Holland or Switzerland, or Italy, and escape. Sell your charges to those whom you have oft told me would buy them, and fly." "And you? You--my love?" "As you bid me I will do. If you will have me by your side, or go before you or stay behind, you must but say the word and I obey. Do with me as you would with your favourite dog; leave me or take me. "I will never leave you," her lover murmured. "Never. We escape together----" "Or we fall together. Is it not so?" "It is so. And, remember, our danger and our safety go hand in hand. If either of us is found in Paris when once La Reynie's blood-hounds are let loose, there will be but one end for both." "No matter so that we share that end. Yet," she said suddenly, recalling what both had forgotten. "There is La Truaumont. Also Van den Enden and the bully, La Preaux. The former, at least, should be warned." "La Truaumont shall be. As for the Jew and La Preaux, let them look to themselves." "Nay! nay! That is madness. If they are taken ere we are safe they will divulge all. To save ourselves we must save them." CHAPTER XXI The following day De Beaurepaire rode into the great courtyard of Versailles, while, as he did so, the sentries of the Garde de Corps du Roi saluted him, the guard turned out, and the drummers sitting outside in the morning sun sprang to their drums and hastily beat them in honour of him who commanded all the various regiments of the King's Guards. He wore now the superb _justaucorps_ of gold cloth and lace to which, by virtue of his charge and office, he was entitled; across it, under his scarlet coat, ran his white satin sash stamped with golden suns: his three-cornered hat was laced with galloon, his sword was ivory-hilted, with, surmounting its handle, a gold sun.