"And I go too!" cried Louis. "Let the robbers and the priests divide Viteau between them. I will not let my mother go among the barbarians without me."
"The English are not barbarians," said Raymond. "There are plenty of good knights and noble ladies at the court of King Henry, and all over the land, too, as I have read."
"I thought they must be savages," said Louis, "because they have no Inquisition. Surely, if England were a Christian land like France, there would be an Inquisition there."
Up to this time Agnes had been silent, eagerly listening to the conversation of the boys. But now she spoke:
"Louis and Raymond!" she cried, "I think it will be an awful, dreadful thing for your poor mother to go to England; I don't care what sort of a country it is, or who goes with her. Isn't there somebody who can make these people stop their wicked doings without fighting them? Can't the King do it?"
"Of course he can," cried Louis. "The King can do anything."
[Illustration: AGNES TELLS RAYMOND AND LOUIS OF HER PLAN.]
"Perhaps he can," said Raymond. "I spoke to my mother about that this morning, and asked her why Count de Barran did not go to the King and beseech him to inquire into this matter, and to see why one of his subjects—as good a Christian as any in the land—should be so persecuted. She said I spoke too highly of her——"
"Indeed, I did not," continued Raymond. "And then she told me that the mother of our King, Queen Blanche, who has more to do with the affairs of France than her son himself, does not like Barran, who, with our father, opposed her long with voice and sword, in the disputes between Burgundy and the Crown. So it is that he could not go to ask a favor of her son, for fear that it would do us more harm than good."
"But is he the only person in the world?" cried Agnes. "Why can't somebody else go? Why don't you go, Raymond, with Louis—and with me? Let us all three go! We can tell the King what has happened, as well as any one, and the Queen-Mother can not bear a grudge against any of us. Let us go! My father will not say me nay."
Louis agreed instantly to this glorious plan, and Raymond, after a moment's thought, gave it a hearty assent.
"We'll start by the dawn of day to-morrow," cried Agnes; and away she ran to ask her father if she might mount a horse, and go with Louis and Raymond to Paris, to see the King.