Words so brave, and so well adapted to encourage the Huguenots in
the crisis through which their affairs were then passing, charmed
all hearers; save indeed, those--and they were few--who, being
devoted to the Vicomte de Turenne, disliked, though they could
not controvert, this public acknowledgment of the King of
Navarre, as the Huguenot leader. The pleasure of those present
was evinced in a hundred ways, and to such an extent that even I
returned to my chamber soothed and exalted, and found, in
dreaming of the speedy triumph of the cause, some compensation
for my own ill-fortune.

As the day wore on, however, and the evening brought no change,
but presented to me the same dreary prospect with which morning
had made me familiar, I confess without shame that my heart sank
once more, particularly as I saw that I should be forced in a day
or two to sell either my remaining horse or some part of my
equipment as essential; a step which I could not contemplate
without feelings of the utmost despair. In this state of mind I
was adding up by the light of a solitary candle the few coins I
had left, when I heard footsteps ascending the stairs. I made
them out to be the steps of two persons, and was still lost in
conjectures who they might be, when a hand knocked gently at my
door.

Fearing another trick, I did not at once open, the more so there
was something stealthy and insinuating in the knock. Thereupon
my visitors held a whispered consultation; then they knocked
again. I asked loudly who was there, but to this they did not
choose to give any answer, while I, on my part, determined not to
open until they did. The door was strong, and I smiled grimly at