Orders were given
for the gates of Paris to be shut (gates that in those days barred the
road along which we now motored), but they were too late. Navarre and
his hunters had passed through. Agrippa d'Aubigny was not among them.
His part had been to watch the happenings of the Court, and join Navarre
later in his own kingdom, but that hope was broken. Disguised as a
_mignon_ of Henri III, he slipped out of Paris on a fast horse, tore
after the Bearnais and his equerries, and caught the cavalcade in the
forest. "Thou art betrayed!" he cried.
"But not captured!" laughed Navarre.
In haste they substituted a new plot for the old. The young king was to
pretend ignorance of the betrayal. He installed himself accordingly in
the best lodgings of Senlis, talking loudly about hunting prospects,
arranged to see a performance by travelling actors, and sent such a
message back to Catherine and Henri that they believed Fervacques had
fooled them.
By the time they'd waked to the truth, Navarre had ridden safely out of
Senlis with his friends, bound for the kingdom on the Spanish border.
Even then he was a man of big ambitions; so maybe he said to himself,
looking back at Senlis: "I shall travel this road again, as king of
France, to enter Paris in triumph." Anyhow, he was grateful to Senlis
for saving him, and stayed there often, as Henri Quatre, flirting with
pretty ladies, and inviting them to become abbesses when he tired of
them.
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