Lallier if he will come and sup with us and bring the wine; we'll
furnish the victuals. Tell him, above all, to bring his daughter."

Lecamus, the syndic of the guild of furriers, was a handsome old man
of sixty, with white hair, and a broad, open brow. As court furrier
for the last forty years, he had witnessed all the revolutions of the
reign of Francois I. He had seen the arrival at the French court of
the young girl Catherine de' Medici, then scarcely fifteen years of
age. He had observed her giving way before the Duchesse d'Etampes, her
father-in-law's mistress; giving way before the Duchesse de
Valentinois, the mistress of her husband the late king. But the
furrier had brought himself safely through all the chances and changes
by which court merchants were often involved in the disgrace and
overthrow of mistresses. His caution led to his good luck. He
maintained an attitude of extreme humility. Pride had never caught him
in its toils. He made himself so small, so gentle, so compliant, of so
little account at court and before the queens and princesses and
favorites, that this modesty, combined with good-humor, had kept the
royal sign above his door.

Such a policy was, of course, indicative of a shrewd and perspicacious
mind. Humble as Lecamus seemed to the outer world, he was despotic in
his own home; there he was an autocrat. Most respected and honored by
his brother craftsmen, he owed to his long possession of the first
place in the trade much of the consideration that was shown to him. He
was, besides, very willing to do kindnesses to others, and among the
many services he had rendered, none was more striking than the
assistance he had long given to the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth
century, Ambroise Pare, who owed to him the possibility of studying
for his profession. In all the difficulties which came up among the