The scar, once a proud and happy place upon my arm, burned as if a coal of fire had been dropped upon it and for one wild moment I could have cut from me the arm that had interposed to save the life of my master. Then I knelt before her, when she had waved her hand for my approach, and presented the letter. She looked at it carelessly and turned her eyes from it to me where I knelt and beckoned me to rise. “Tell me of yourself,” she said in a voice that was like the softest strain of a lute. “Who are you?” Who was I? Yesterday I would have said a man. Had I not done a man’s part in battle? Was it not a man’s right arm that had stretched itself forth to save a great life? Now I was—nothing. There was not a grain of dust in the streets of Paris smaller than I. “Nothing, my lady,” I said, not daring to lift my eyes to her face, nor scarcely to look at her hand lying like a white lily on the snow of her gown. “That proves you very much,” she said, “for a man never thinks himself nothing till he has a standard of merit with which to compare himself and the possession of such a standard is a proof of worth.” “I am only Pierre—the servant of Monsieur le Géneral.” With what pride I should yesterday have avowed myself the servant of so brave a soldier and so grand a gentleman. With what hatred of him and what contempt for myself did I make that statement today. Did not the great gulf between the gold and white Queen of the World deepen and widen infinitely with the significance of my words? “Monsieur le Géneral is fortunate.” She wrote a line on a leaf from a gold and white tablet and gave it to me, sealed with a golden seal. I bowed low and went out from her presence with my face toward her. At the entrance I lifted my eyes and looked dazzled at the spot of light in the centre of the great hall. Thus I passed out into the courtyard flooded with sunlight which seemed dim in comparison with that supernal radiance. The dark-eyed page had seated himself on the rim of the basin into which the fountain fell with a tinkling music that kept rhythm with the song he was still singing. With the refrain yet ringing in my ears, “Never a rose like my lady’s face,” I went back to Monsieur le Géneral with the missive she had given me. A little later the blood of the Paris streets spattered to the gold robes of the court. I saw the head of Monsieur le Géneral carried by me on a spike and the dark-faced, ragged man who bore it sang a ribald song as he looked mockingly up into the face, one word of which would have been his death-warrant had it been uttered when that head yet sat upon the stately shoulders. For a moment a sorrowful thought of the days when I loved him lay like a cloud upon my mind, but what time was there then for thinking of love—at least of that love.