"Yes, sir," said I, "not a quarter of an hour ago."
"Then the Duke is our only chance," he said.
He said no more till we came to the great antechamber by the King's bedroom. It was half full of people; but the Duke was nowhere to be seen. I waited by the door as M. Barillon went forward and spoke to someone. Then he came back to me.
"The Duke is with the Queen," he said. "We must go to him there."
It was enough to send a man mad so to seek person after person in such a simple matter as this. Why in God's name, I wondered, might not even a King die in what religion he liked, without all this plotting and conspiring? Was I never to be free from these things?
At the door to the Queen's apartments M. Barillon turned to me.
"You had best wait here, sir," he said. "I will speak with the Duke privately first."
He was admitted instantly so soon as he knocked; and went through leaving me in a little gallery.
* * * * *
Of all that went through my mind as I walked up and down, with a page watching me from the door, I can give no account at all. Again one half of my attention was fixed, though with out any coherency, on the business I was at; the other half observed the carpet under my feet, the cabinets along the wall, and the pictures. It was not near as splendid as were the rooms I had left so short a while ago.