The lad sought to obey him with an alacrity that merited a kinder fate.
Had he been in less haste perchance he had been more successful. As it
was, he had got no farther than his knees when his right leg slid from
under him, and he fell prone among the shattered tableware, mumbling curses
and apologies in a breath.

Mazarin stood gazing at him with an eye that was eloquent in scorn, then
bending down he spoke quickly to him in Italian. What he said I know not,
being ignorant of their mother tongue; but from the fierceness of his
utterance I'll wager my soul 't was nothing sweet to listen to. When he
had done with him, he turned to his valet.

"Bernouin," said he, "summon M. de Mancini's servant and assist him to get
my nephew to bed. M. de Luynes, be good enough to take Bernouin's taper
and light me back to my apartments."

Unsavoury as was the task, I had no choice but to obey, and to stalk on in
front of him, candle in hand, like an acolyte at Notre Dame, and in my
heart the profound conviction that I was about to have a bad quarter of an
hour with his Eminence. Nor was I wrong; for no sooner had we reached his
cabinet and the door had been closed than he turned upon me the full
measure of his wrath.

"You miserable fool!" he snarled. "Did you think to trifle with the trust
which in a misguided moment I placed in you? Think you that, when a week
ago I saved you from starvation to clothe and feed you and give you a
lieutenancy in my guards, I should endure so foul an abuse as this? Think
you that I entrusted M. de Mancini's training in arms to you so that you
might lead him into the dissolute habits which have dragged you down to