They approached it cautiously from the back, lest they should run into the arms of any of the numerous enemies of its terrible lord, who, though not abhorred in Paris as in most other places which he favoured with his visits, had yet little love spent upon him even there.
The custodian in the stone cell by the gate came yawning out to the bars at the sound of Gilles de Sille's knocking, and after a growl of disfavour admitted the youth and his companion.
"What, gone--my master gone!" cried Gilles, striking his hand on his thigh with an astounded air, "impossible!" "It was, indeed, a thing particularly unthoughtful and discourteous of my Lord de Retz, Marshal of France and Chamberlain of the King, to undertake a journey without consulting you," replied the man, who considered irony his strong point, but feebly concealing his pleasure at the favourite's discomfiture; "we all know upon what terms your honourable self is with my lord.

But you must not blame him, for he waited whole twenty-four hours for news of you.

It was reported that you were set upon by four giants, and that your bones, crushed like a filbert, had been discovered in the horse pond at the back of the Convent of the Virgins of Complaisance." Gilles de Sille looked as if he could very well have murdered the speaker on the spot.

His favour with his lord was evidently not a thing of repute in his master's household.

So much was clear to Laurence, who, for the first time, began to have fears as to his own reception, having such an unpopular person as voucher and introducer.
"If you do not keep a civil tongue in your head, sirrah Labord,"-- the youth hissed the words through his clenched teeth,--"I will have your throat cut." "Ah, I am too old," said the man, boldly; "besides, this is Paris, and I have been twenty years concierge to his Grace the Duke of Orleans.