De Brissac had spoken with his eyes turned to the floor, since he would not be witness of what, he knew, must be the other's misery when he learnt that no letter would be permitted to pass between him and this woman of whom he had spoken so fondly. But now, as the unhappy man uttered that woman's name, he looked up suddenly and stared fixedly at him. "Who is this woman? What is she?" he asked. "As I have told you, the woman I love." "And her name is Emérance?" De Brissac said, endeavouring to speak as lightly as possible and as easily as the present circumstances might permit. "It is a pretty name. Of the North of France, I think. I have heard it before." If he had not heard it before he had at least read it before. He had read it only that very morning when the _courrier du Roi_, after calling on La Reynie, had continued his journey to Versailles and, besides bringing one of the warrants for the arrest of De Beaurepaire if he should appear there, also brought with him the copies of the warrants issued by La Reynie for the arrest of four other persons. Four other persons, one of whom was described as Louise de Belleau de Cortonne, styling herself Emérance, Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville, another who was known as Affinius Van den Enden, which was believed to be his proper name, and another who passed under the sobriquet of Fleur de Mai, but whose right name was La Preaux, and who termed himself Le Chevalier de la Preaux, though unregistered in any order of knighthood. The fourth was the Sieur Georges du Hamel of La Truaumont, styled the Captain la Truaumont. De Brissac's astonishment, perhaps, also, his emotion, was not therefore singular, as not only had he seen the warrant with the woman's name in it, but the task had been deputed to him of proceeding to Rouen there to arrest the Captain la Truaumont, the Lieutenant of Police, La Reynie, having received undoubted evidence that the conspirator was now in the city preparing to levy war against both the King's throne and his person. CHAPTER XXII "The hopeless Conspiracy," as it came to be called later, was, from the moment that De Beaurepaire, the Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville and Van den Enden were arrested, one that caused more sensation in France than any other event of the period. Not even that of the Marquise de Brinvilliers for poisoning her own father and brothers at the instigation of her lover, nor that of "La" Voisin for the sale of poisons--for the purchase of which the Duchesse de Vivonne and Madame de Montespan were themselves denounced, while Olympe Mancini fled the country--were more talked of than this affair.