be faithful. For money, here are a hundred crowns. That sum
should suffice; but if you succeed you shall have twice as much
more. That is all, I think. You understand?'

'Yes, Monseigneur.'

'Then why do you wait?'

'The lieutenant?' I said modestly.

The Cardinal laughed to himself, and sitting down wrote a word or
two on a slip of paper. 'Give him that,' he said in high good-
humour. 'I fear, M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts
--in this world!'



CHAPTER II.

AT THE GREEN PILLAR

Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts
--a land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest.
Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled
and more sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow
mountains that here limit France. It swarms with game--with
wolves and bears, deer and boars. To the end of his life I have
heard that the great king loved this district, and would sigh,
when years and State fell heavily on him, for the beech groves
and box-covered hills of South Bearn. From the terraced steps of