When the secretary, who readily assented, had given me his
receipt and was gone, I questioned Maignan afresh and more
closely, but with no result. He had not seen me place the packet
in the portfolio at Calais, and that I had done so I could vouch
only my own memory, which I knew to be fallible. In the
meantime, though the mischance annoyed me, I attached no great
importance to it; but anticipating that a word of explanation
would satisfy the King, and a new cipher dispose of other
difficulties, I dismissed the matter from my mind.
Twenty-four hours later, however, I was rudely awakened. A
courier arrived from Henry, and surprising me in the midst of my
last preparations at the Arsenal, handed me an order to attend
his Majesty; an order couched in the most absolute and peremptory
terms, and lacking all those friendly expressions which the King
never failed to use when he wrote to me. A missive so brief and
so formal--and so needless, for I was on the point of starting--
had not reached me for years; and coming at this moment when I
had no reason to expect a reverse of fortune, it had all the
effect of a thunder-bolt in a clear sky.
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