Of the person who had conveyed the missive to me I had unfortunately seen nothing; though I believed him to be a man, and young. But the circumstances, which seemed to indicate the extreme need of secrecy, gave me a hint as to my own conduct. Accordingly, I smoothed my brow, and on the coach stopping at the Arsenal descended with my usual face of preoccupation.
At the foot of the staircase my maître-d'-hôtel met me.
"M. Nicholas, the King's secretary, is here," he said. "He has been waiting your return an hour and more, Monseigneur."
"Lay another cover," I answered, repressing the surprise I could not but feel on hearing of this visit, so strangely à propos. "Doubtless he has come to dine with me."
Barely staying to take off my cloak, I went upstairs with an air as gay as possible, and, making my visitor a hundred apologies for the inconvenience I had caused him, insisted he should sit down with me. This he was nothing loth to do; though, as presently appeared, his errand was only to submit to me some papers connected with the new tax of a penny in the shilling, which it was his duty to lay before me.
I scolded him gayly for the long period which had elapsed since his last visit, and succeeded so well in setting him at his ease that he presently began to rally me on my slackness; for I could touch nothing but a little game and a glass of water. Excusing myself as well as I could, I encouraged him to continue the attack; and certainly, if a good conscience waits on appetite, I had soon abundant evidence on his behalf. He grew merry and talkative, and, telling me some free tales, bore himself altogether so naturally that I had begun to deem my suspicions baseless, when a chance word gave me new grounds for entertaining them.
I was on the subject of my morning's employment. Knowing how easily confidence begets confidence, and that in his position the matter could not be long kept from him, I told him as a secret where I had been.
"I do not wish all the world to know, my friend," I said; "but you are a discreet man, and it will go no farther. I am just from Du Hallot's."
He dropped his napkin and stooped to pick it up again with a gesture so hasty that it caught my attention and led me to watch him. Moreover, although my words seemed to call for an answer, he did not speak until he had taken a deep draught of wine; and then he said only, "Indeed!" in a tone of such indifference as might at another time have deceived me, but now was perfectly patent.
"Yes," I replied, affecting to be engaged with my own plate (we were eating nuts). "Doubtless you will be able to guess on what subject."
"I?" he said, as quick to answer as he had before been slow. "No, I think not."
"La Fin," I said; "and his statements respecting M. de Biron's friends."
"Ah!" he replied, shrugging his shoulders. He had contrived to regain his composure, but I noticed that his hand shook, and I saw him put a nut into his mouth with so much salt upon it that he had no choice but to make a grimace. "They tell me he accuses everybody," he grumbled, his eyes on his plate. "Even the King is scarcely safe from him. But I have heard no particulars."
"They will be known by and by," I answered prudently. And after that I did not think it wise to speak farther, lest I should give more than I got; but as soon as he had finished, and we had washed our hands, I led him to the closet looking on the river, where I was in the habit of working with my secretaries. I sent them away and sat down with him to his accounts; but in the position in which I found myself, between suspicion and perplexity, I could so little command my attention that I gathered nothing from their items; and had I found another doing the King's service as negligently I had certainly sent him about his business. Nevertheless I made some show of auditing them, and had reached the last roll when something in the fairly written summary, which closed the account, caught my eye. I bent more closely over it, and presently making an occasion to carry the parchment into the next room, compared it with the handwriting on the scrap of paper I had found in the snowball. A brief scrutiny showed me that they were the work of the same person!
I went back to M. Nicholas, and after attesting the accounts, and making one or two notes, remarked in a careless way on the clearness of the hand. "I am badly in need of a fourth secretary," I added. "Your scribe might do for me."
It did not escape me that once again M. Nicholas looked uncomfortable, his red face taking a deeper tinge and his hand going nervously to his pointed gray beard, "I do not think he would do for you," he answered.
"What is his name?" I asked, purposely bending over the papers and avoiding his eyes.
"I have dismissed him," he rejoined curtly. "I do not know where he could now be found."
"That is a pity-he writes well," I answered, as if it were nothing but a whim that led me to pursue the subject. "And good clerks are scarce. What was his name?"
"Felix," he said reluctantly.
I had now all I wanted. Accordingly I spoke of another matter and shortly afterward Nicholas rose and went. But he left me in a fever of doubt and suspicion; so that for nearly half an hour I walked up and down the room, unable to decide whether I should treat the warning of the snowball with contempt, as the work of a discharged servant, or on that very account attach the more credit to it. By and by I remembered that the last sheet of the roll I had audited bore date the previous day; whence it was clear that Felix had been dismissed within the last twenty-four hours, and perhaps after the delivery of his note to me. Such a coincidence, which seemed no less pertinent than strange, opened a wide field for conjecture; and the possibility that Nicholas had really called on me to sound me and learn what I knew presently occurring to my mind, brought me to a final determination to seek out this Felix, and without the delay of an hour sift the matter to the bottom.
Doubtless I shall seem to some to have acted precipitately, and built much on small foundations. I answer that I had the life of the King my master to guard, and in that cause dared neglect no precaution, however trivial, nor any indication, however remote. Would that all my care and vigilance had longer sufficed to preserve for France the life of that great man! But God willed otherwise.
I sent word at once to La Font, my valet-de-chambre, the same who advised me at the time of my first marriage, to come to me; and directing him to make instant and secret inquiry where Felix, a clerk in the Chamber of Accounts, lodged, bade him report to me on my return from the Great Hall, where, it will be remembered, it was my custom to give audience after dinner to all who had business with me. As it happened, I was detained long that day, and found him awaiting me. Being a man of few words, he said, as soon as the door was shut, "At the 'Three Half Moons,' in the Faubourg St. Honoré, Monseigneur."