below his window, to answer the questions of the travellers,
pilgrims, or labourers who had missed their way from farm to farm, or
halting soldier seeking guidance; terrible or terror-stricken
companies sometimes, rudely or piteously importunate to be let in--
for it was the period of the Religious Wars, flaming up here and
there over France, and never quite put out, during forty years.

Once, in the beginning of these troubles (he was then a child,
leaning from the window, as a sound of rickety, small wheels
approached) the enquiry came in broken French, "Voulez-vous donner
direction?" from a German, one of the mercenaries of the Duc de
Guise, hired for service in a civil strife of France, drawing wearily
a crippled companion, so far from home. [14] The memory of it,
awakening a thousand strange fancies, had remained by him, as a
witness to the power of fortuitous circumstance over the imagination.

One night there had come a noise of horns, and presently King Charles
himself was standing in the courtyard, belated, and far enough now
from troublesome company, as he hunted the rich-fleshed game of La
Beauce through the endless corn. He entered, with a relish for the
pleasant cleanliness of the place, expressed in a shrill strain of
half-religious oaths, like flashes of hell-fire to Gaston's suddenly-
awakened sense. It was the invincible nature of the royal lad to
speak, and feel, on these mad, alto notes, and not unbecoming in a
good catholic; for Huguenots never swore, and these were subtly
theological oaths. Well! the grandparents repressed as best they
could their apprehensions as to what other hunters, what other
disconcerting incident, might follow; for catholic France very
generally believed that the Huguenot leaders had a scheme for
possessing themselves of the person of the young king, known to be